


Tinder Surprise

by CaptainDude (HandbagMurder)



Category: South Park
Genre: Awkwardness, Did somebody say ROOMMATES???, Drug Use Mentions, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Makeouts of the Sloppy Variety, Masturbation, One-Sided Attraction, Oral Sex, Sex, TOO BAD., Tinder, collegeAU, no?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:33:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandbagMurder/pseuds/CaptainDude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Craig had signed up for the app in desperation, but like all desperate acts he wasnt really prepared for the consequences. </p><p>(M for now. Will be E.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Craig sat alone in the back of the lecture theatre, hunched over his phone screen and reading the terms and conditions closer than anyone ever had before. His finger hovered tentatively over the little checkbox which said ‘I Agree’, and his hesitance gave him a moment to become aware of the uneasy churning in his stomach, but after a few seconds of doubt (the remnants of weeks of deliberation) he finally gave in and clicked download, placing his cellphone face down on the desk and pushing it a safe distance away.

Honestly, he was still really embarrassed that he had to resort to this. He wasn’t sure he could just sit there and watch the little installation bar inching pixel by pixel across his screen.

Craig had always considered dating apps objectively seedy. As far as he was concerned, they were something reserved solely for Token and Clyde’s debaucherous weekend rendezvous, and hardly the type of thing worthy of pursuit by him. As a closeted and average looking guy though, Craig Tucker’s options when it came to dating were severely limited. It was of very little comfort to know that off all the possible solutions to his loneliness, this option had been by far the most palatable.

Or rather, it was definitely better than continuing to nurse a hopeless and unrequited crush on a friend.

Up at the front of the lecture hall, Craig’s professor was still busy teaching, and Craig was sweating so hard from his nerves that he was sure a diamond shaped damp patch had appeared on the back of his t-shirt. Was everyone in the entire hall staring at him, or was that just his imagination? For some reason, he felt as though he had grown a horrifyingly conspicuous second head. He did his best to ignore the feeling, and hoped that no-one would notice his unease.

His phone chimed quietly when the app had downloaded, and startled he snatched it up again so he could enter his credentials and start setting his profile up. He knew he should probably have been taking notes instead, but he hadn’t been concentrating for the whole class and so he figured that so he would just have to flag it and hope that calculating gravitational force wouldn’t come up in his exams. After skipping the options to take a new photo for his account, he quickly selected a couple of pictures from his current facebook gallery instead. Those ones were already pre-approved and discreet, but as he selected each image he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that there wasn’t a single one in which he was smiling.

He sighed, deciding that the selection of images he had would just have to do. It was probably better for everyone involved if his potential matches knew exactly what it was they were getting. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if the poor guy who got matched with him was deluded into thinking Craig was actually a likeable person.

He typed in a short summary about himself ( _tall and mostly fit, born in Colorado and good at talking about math)_ and hoped this wasn’t coming across too desperate. What was the normal amount of description people put for themselves on this thing anyway? Did he have to put in a few words about his type? For a moment, he weighed up putting in details on wether he was a top or a bottom. When he caught himself contemplating this though, his whole face flushed hot like he was sitting cross-legged in front of an open fire.

Oh dear.

As much as Craig tried to tell himself he was just going to use this app solely for the purpose of establishing a long term relationship, he knew deep down that his chances of finding true love on this frivolous thing were not hot. Programs like this were used with nothing but the intent to get laid. If he was too embarrassed and self-conscious about acknowledging this, and even more reluctant to accept it, then it was probable that others would label him as frigid and decline to engage. He considered briefly wether or not it would be to his advantage to admit he was a virgin. He suspected there were probably lots of guys out there who got off on the idea of someone who had no experience fucking before, and they might be a little more gentle when it came to addressing the issue of sex overall. Craig thought he could probably fake being naive and vulnerable, even though in his day-to-day life he always made a point of being the exact opposite.

Craig knew he shouldn’t be shy about using the app if he wanted anything from it, yet ultimately his virgin status was something he decided to keep off his page. Maybe it was because he was nervous - this particular platform really did feel kind of exposed. It wasn’t like he could check who was looking at his pictures or anything, and the idea of strangers jerking off to them, or showing them to their friends and saying ‘Hey look, isn’t this that guy in physics 230?’made him feel a little nauseous.

He set his gender preference filter to men, and with a fugitive glance around the hall to make _absolutely sure_ no one was watching him, he started flicking through pictures himself, and declining or accepting his matches accordingly.

 

…

 

His roommate was napping when he got back to his room, which was a bizarre but not unusual thing to walk in on because if there was one thing to be said about Tweek Tweak’s sleeping schedule it would be that it was thoroughly, irredeemably, unforgivably fucked up. When the urge to succumb to dreams overtook him, he usually just kind of keeled over wherever he happened to be at the time. Today, that place seemed to be the end of Craig’s bed, his face buried in the duvets rumpled at the foot and the bottom part of his legs hanging over the edge like he wasn’t at all scared of the monsters he probably still believed lived under the there. Craig sighed and dropped his books on the desk – something which created a loud noise and made the other boy sit up in shock. He swore loudly when he almost slipped off the edge and Craig gave him a gentle shove so that he remained where he was, clutching handfuls of Craig’s blankets and looking a lot like he had just been hit around the head with a large object.

“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, and all the cigarettes he smoked made him sound like he had a head cold. “One day you are going to give me a heart attack.”

“Get off my bed.” Craig said, sitting down at the top end by the head board and setting his phone down on the side table next to the box of tissues and bedside lamp. “You can sleep on your own.”

“Fuck. Sorry, sorry. I’m sorry I was sitting here reading some notes and I just kind of fell asleep. Ah!” He sifted through Craig’s sheets for the wad of highlighted notes he must have had before he nodded off, and when he found them he held them up in triumph so Craig could see the highlighting in large patches all over the body of text.

“Found them.”

“You know,” Craig scoffed, noting that Tweek hadn’t been to his lectures today obviously, because he was still wearing his stripy blue pyjama bottoms and the D.A.R.E t-shirt Craig could only assume he owned ironically. “The idea of highlighting is to only highlight _key points_. If you cover the whole thing in yellow, what’s the point?”

“Ahahaha.” Tweek laughed sarcastically and stumbled to his feet. His pyjama pants slipped down his hips a little and for a incredible heart stopping moment, Craig caught a brief glimpse of the hollows at the base of his spine before his eyes flickered up and Tweek adjusted his trousers.

“Funny. All of this is important, that’s why I highlighted _all_ of it.” He stumbled across the room towards his desk, which was stacked with empty coffee mugs and paper cups from Starbucks and a large arrangement of textbooks Craig could only assume were in some kind of order. Craig wondered, with a vague sense of unhappiness, if his roommate was stoned again. Or fucked up on codeine. Or if he was just disorientated because last night, he had sat up for nine hours watching alien documentaries on youtube. He _claimed_ that this was all very relevant to his degree in media studies, but Craig doubted it.

Tweek dropped his notes on his desk and hunted for a hair elastic among the mess. When he found it, he pulled his bangs off his face and tied them out of the way. Craig felt his heart do a funny thing when the boy turned back to face him, and coughed into his hand.

“You wanna go eat?” He asked nervously from behind his fingers, as though he wasn’t entirely sure Craig would want to go eat with him. It wasn’t like they had been living together for almost eight months now. Or like they had grown up together, and Craig could still remember that time in sixth grade when they had to do class speeches and Tweek had been so scared of screwing up he vomited in front of everyone in class. Weird though, how the twelve year old who had vomited in front of twenty other twelve year olds could become the twenty-one year old with a nose ring and the kind of face that made girls crane their necks to get a second glimpse. He looked tired as hell, sure, but on Tweek the dark circles looked good. And the unwashed, unbrushed hair made him look rugged. It felt like forever Since Craig had first realised he was infatuated with him, but the aching feeling of want and emptiness he got when they were together was still just as strong as it was the very first day.

When Craig nodded and Tweek sagged in relief he looked a lot more like a normal teenaged boy - Fucked up in that special way that all kids tended to be around age twenty.

He snatched a pair of jeans off the ground, and a clean shirt, and when he reached back behind his head to tug his current shirt off his body Craig got to see his navel and his lower belly just briefly, and the line of pretty blonde hair which snaked underneath the waistband of his pants.

“Don’t look!” Tweek chided him, and Craig rolled his eyes when he looked away. It was kind of unfair, that he was stuck living in such close quarters with Tweek like this. Sometimes, he couldn’t even believe how attracted he was to him. Was Tweek really that hot, or was Craig just desperate as hell for some kind of romantic companionship?

A kiss maybe.

Some affectionate texts.

All night sleeping wrapped in someone else’s arms.

“Okay,” came a voice from his right side. “You can look now.”

When he turned back and saw that Tweek was wearing skinny jeans and a black hoodie that was two sizes too large for his six-foot-frame, Craig felt another pin of longing pierce his chest. The guy was so beautiful. He was positively luminous and he didn’t even know it.

Craig watched him hunt around his desk for a lighter, his pack of smokes, and the pair of dated ray ban sunglasses he wore to hide his panda eyes. He must have felt Craig looking at him, because once he had shoved all of this into the pockets of his hoodie he met his eye and managed a weak smile.

“You pick where we go?” he asked tentatively. Craig heaved a sigh and pulled himself back up off the bed.

He made sure to grab his cellphone before they left the room.

 

…

 

“Oh man, I have _such_ a headache. I dunno if I can even eat this.”

Tweek sat opposite him with his head cradled in his hands, his Cheeseburger sitting in front of him untouched and his kiddies cup of diet coke already sucked down to the ice. Craig raised his eyebrows and took a handful of his chips without him noticing – or at least he thought he did, until Tweek lifted his gaze and glared at him because of course Tweek tweak noticed _everything_. And if there was nothing there to notice, his over-active imagination made something up.

“I saw that.” He said, hazel green eyes fixed on Craig’s. Craig shrugged like he didn’t care and reached for his own drink, leaning back in the sticky and uncomfortable McDonalds booth seat and gazing around the restaurant so he didn’t have to look his friend in the face. His phone was sitting in his pocket still, feeling hot and difficult to carry even though it fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. He supposed this must be what a loaded gun must feel like. Or a murder weapon. Or a large quantity of money he shouldn’t have stolen, but jammed into his pocket anyway in the hopes no one would notice and he got away with it. There was no guilt associated with the feeling of having it with him, but there was a distinct sense of anxiety, and he wondered if it was the same type of anxiety Tweek seemed to live with or if it was something else. Like butterflies having a good old fashioned barn dance in his stomach.

“Maybe you wouldn’t have a headache if you didn’t drink so much caffeine.”

“Nn… actually, I’m really stressing out over my essay right now. I’m pretty sure it’s that.”

“Isn’t your essay due in like… ten days?”

“Yes! Hardly any time at all! I’m way behind and I slept through lectures today and I’m making myself feel sick thinking about it.” He frowned animatedly and Craig thought it was kind of funny, how he could look so despairing about an essay due in ten days time - as if the entire future of mankind depended on his completing it tomorrow. Craig forced himself not to laugh and took a big bite out of his BLT burger. After watching him chew for a moment, Tweek decided he mustn’t be too sick to eat his food after all.

He picked up his meal and gave it a big bite, and Craig thought about bringing up the fact that most fast food burgers have traces of other peoples hair and skin flakes in them. And also maybe even faecal particles depending on the quality of the meat and how it was slaughtered in the factories. He decided against it though, because Tweek flipping out about that and demanding Craig take him to the hospital to be checked for diseases just didn’t sound like an ideal Friday evenings activities.

“You have all weekend to catch up?” he said, and Tweek gave him a look like he didn’t understand at all.

“I have plans.” He said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Craig knew that ‘plans’ probably meant taking ecstasy and lying around on the dorm building lawn at two am so he can talk to the stars.

“Don’t sleep through them.”

Tweek glared at him, like he wanted to give him a sharp kick beneath the table, and Craig had to do something to hide the fact that that look made his heart do gymnastics in his chest. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and checked to see if he had had any matches on his app yet.

Nope. Not at this time. He felt himself flush in annoyance, and briefly considered deleting his profile. But then he remembered that before he could be matched he had to like profiles, and though he had looked at over one hundred earlier that afternoon he had only liked a grand total of three of them.

Despite being a solid five at best, Craig was really fussy when it came to men. If they weren’t Tweek, then they were already disadvantaged, and if were loud or annoying looking, too skinny or too fat, too low brow or too hairy, then he absolutely didn’t want an inch of it. He just wanted someone who looked hot and who might be willing to watch a Red Racer marathon with him some time. Unfortunately, that sort of guy was hard to come by. Maybe he should throw caution to the wind and download the more hardcore, exclusively gay alternative? Maybe he should just go back to being lonely and frustrated and jerking off to romance porn on the internet.

He chewed the inside of his cheek uncomfortably and turned off his phone screen.

God, _why_ couldn’t Tweek just be gay? Or maybe even if he was just bi-curious, perhaps a little less nervous about being physically close with anyone of the same gender, Craig would be brave enough to make a move on him. Unfortunately, though, every time he even came close to touching Tweek’s hand or brushing against him, the other boy jerked away or started talking loudly about how the pyramids were actually giant batteries and that Machu Pichu was actually built before the start of the last ice age. If Craig was less of a decent human being, maybe he would have tried his approach while Tweek was fucked up on sedatives, or blasting his brain cells with whatever white powder he had managed to find on campus on the day, but every time he thought about that he felt his mouth get dry and his stomach get sloppy – he hated that that idea was even something that could occur to him, so he pushed it to the back of his head and tried to keep it away.

It was probably thoughts like that which convinced him that he _needed_ to find someone else to fixate on. Just in case he ended up trying to kiss him by accident and ruining the most important friendship he ever had.

They sat in silence for a while eating, and Tweek’s eyes darted around the restaurant like he was alert and watching everyone to make sure they weren’t looking at him too funny, so Craig decided he was either really sober, or on speed. Craig liked the colour of those eyes, and the way they fluttered when he was trying to wrap his head around an idea, and the way they were always super duper dilated – Craig had never seen eyes like them on anyone else, and often he wondered what the world looked like through them. If he saw the same things Craig did. Probably not. Otherwise he would never stop looking at his own stupid reflection.

“What are you looking for?” Craig asked eventually, and Tweek inhaled sharply like he hadn’t expected to be asked a question.

“Huh?”

“You keep looking around for something?”

“I do? No I don’t.” He frowned and finished eating. When he wiped his fingers on a napkin, Craig saw his nails were bitten down to the quick. A lock of hair had fallen out of the stubby ponytail he had shoved it in, and it was resting on his forehead rakishly. Craig noticed he had a thin veil of oil on his nose, suggesting he hadn’t showered for more than twenty four hours. Craig checked his watch and saw that it was almost half past five in the evening.

“Got any ‘plans’ tonight then?” he asked. Tweek shook his head and fiddled absent mindedly with his nose ring.

“Not til tomorrow. I might watch a movie or something of you’re interested.”

“Sure. But you better shower first you really stink.”

Even though it was a lie, it was worth saying just to watch Tweek’s entire face and neck turn an embarrassed pink.

 

…

 

It took the whole walk home for Craig to brush off Tweek’s apologies and convince him that he was just kidding about his odour, and when Tweek got back to the room the first thing he did was snatch up a towel, his razor, and some shaving cream so he could shower and scrape off the faint shadow of a beard which appeared around his jawline after a few days without showering. He didn’t use shampoo, because he believed that the chemicals in it could kill him.

Craig calculated that because he would spend ten minutes washing, and at least twenty minutes shaving and ensuring he didn’t accidentally nick himself or anything while he did so. That left Craig with a decent enough chunk of time to lie back in his room and really chew through some profiles on his phone. Maybe, if he okayed enough people by the time Tweek got out of the shower, he could be exchanging sweet nothings with someone by this time tomorrow and maybe, he told himself as he took a seat against the pillows on his bed, that would be the exact thing he needed to get himself out of this pit of despairable solitude, and to release all those particular tensions that couldn’t be expelled by traditional (masturbatory) modes.

He lost count of the profiles he passed on, bisexual and gay men who really didn’t look like his ticket, before he reached one he recognised as belonging to the boy who worked at the university book store sometimes. Even though Craig didn’t think he was attractive, he liked the profile just because he knew him, and if they ended up on a date then Craig would at least be able to resort to discussing literature – something he had little to no knowledge of. At best.

He liked the profile of one guy who was kind of older and usually not Craig’s type, but he was getting desperate and he supposed if he could talk the guy into shaving his beard it might be worth trying him on for size. He passed on twenty more, then liked the profile of a blond skater looking kid who was only just eighteen and reminded Craig a little bit of Tweek. He didn’t even realise it, but he was comparing each and every face put before him to the one he had imprinted into his mind as being perfect and as such, he became very disorientated when a profile came up that said

_Yves, 20. less than 1km from your location: Last active two hours ago._

He stared at the photo he was looking at for a moment in confusion, thought it must be some kind of a sick fucked up joke, but then realised that no one he knew would actually even think to joke about this. Or know about it. Or anything. Clearly, there had been some kind of a mistake.

His profile picture was singular, and Craig recognised it because he had _taken_ it, the last summer after they had graduated and they were still in South Park with their friends. Tweek had much longer hair then (he had refused to let anyone cut his hair during high school) and his nose was still in its original state. The photo was taken at the beach when he was unsuspecting, and it was one of few photos of Tweek where he actually didn’t look high or like he was on the verge of an emotional breakdown. His smile was Craig’s favourite part of him, the rare dimples in his cheeks and the perfect evenness of his teeth, and the picture brought it out like a setting brought out the glitter in a gemstone. Craig’s heart missed a beat, and he was so shocked when the door swung open that he fumbled his phone and almost dropped it in the process of cramming it underneath his pillow. Tweek, standing in the bathroom doorway in his pyjamas again and with his towel slung around his neck, gave him a very suspicious look.

“… What?” he asked, eyes narrowing, and Craig tried too come up with a good response but could find nothing. Not a single thing. Why the _fuck_ had he thought Tweek would know he was doing something unusual if he hadn’t tried to hide his fucking phone?

Craig was a fucking stupid piece of shit, apparently. Caught halfway through acting like some kind of a criminal. He flushed and tried very hard not to meet Tweek’s eyes.

“Nothing.” He pulled his phone back out and made to close the app. “Nothing at all.”

His burger however, still sitting in his stomach from earlier that afternoon, turned into a wriggling stringy mass of good knows what when he saw that in his scramble to conceal what he had been doing, he had confirmed a ‘like’ on Tweek’s profile.

And maybe he was technologically incompetent, or maybe the hideous application didn’t actually have an option to do so, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to take it back.

 

…

 

Watching the movie sitting next to Tweek was hard. Harder than usual even, and watching a movie with Tweek was usually pretty difficult because it meant they both had to sit crammed onto a king single bed so their thighs were pressed together, and Tweek always smelled like coffee and faded aftershave even after showering, and the sound of his breathing made the hairs on the nape of Craig’s neck stand on end. He knew he had a reading he should be doing tonight, but he also knew he couldn’t have focused on it if he tried, because he was already struggling to focus on the pathetically basic plot of Friday the thirtieth part four so the possibility of doing any actual real work was slim. Slasher movies always made Tweek jumpy, and usually Craig let him just sit there and sniggered when he covered his eyes and whined like he _hadn’t_ been the one to suggest it, but tonight every time Tweek winced or made a sound he felt himself shiver. His insides felt puffy and too big for his skin, and his stomach was full of bubbles and wriggling things that made him want to jump up and down and run all the way back to South Park without stopping. He tried to keep his expression neutral, but as he zoned out on the fake blood and cheesy camerawork on screen his mind was racing. Making links, asking questions, trying to unknot the tangle of thoughts and confusion in his head.

For Tweek to come up on his search, he would have had to tick the ‘looking for men’ option on his phone, right? Maybe he had made a mistake or something, because seriously. Tweek was straight. He always had been. He had had that one girlfriend in high school, and then broke up with her because she asked him what he wanted for their one month anniversary and he thought that meant she wanted to marry him. Maybe he _was_ bisexual?

But no. If he was bisexual, why would he be so opposed to physical contact with men? Why did he not like being touched by them, even in high school, when Clyde went through that phase of rubbing up against his buddies because it seemed to turn girls on?

And another thing, Craig thought on top of all of this, _why did Tweek even have that app in the first place_? Did he use it for drug hook ups or something? It’s not like he couldn’t totally just walk out into the quad and ask the first girl he saw out. He was plenty attractive enough to get a date after a few tries at this, even if his fear of being rejected meant that he stumbled a bit over a few of the words. Hell, chicks probably even _liked_ that. Maybe it was cute or something? Craig didn’t know. All he did know was that the idea of him sleeping while Tweek sat up until the early hours swiping and tapping away at his phone like a fugitive was actually personally offensive to him. An illogical response, but a very real one all the same.

Craig had always kind of taken for granted that Tweek didn’t seem interested in dating. He supposed, in some bizarre way, that because Craig was the only person Tweek didn’t seem actively terrified to be around regularly, that made Tweek his own even if they weren’t actually dating. And if Craig decided to go out and test the romantic waters elsewhere, at least he would be able to come back to his room and know that his straight but celibate best friend would be waiting for him. Unconscious maybe, and drooling on his pillow, probably medicated to hell and back but _there_. A sound to listen to in the darkness, a friend to spend time with when he had four assignments due after the weekend and nothing but a desire to get drunk in his heart.

He realised after a while that he was biting his nails, and the hand that wasn’t busy being gnawed on was clutching his cellphone so hard it was seizing up painfully.

“… Are you okay?”

He almost shat his pants when Tweek nudged his shoulder. Not literally of course, but in the metaphorical sense, and it was a bit of a role switch because usually he was the one making physical contact and earning a startled look. This time, Tweek was peering at him like he was concerned, and Craig nodded hurriedly and tried not to look at him any more than he had to in order to reassure him he was fine.

“Yeah. Good. Sorry I’m just kind of… uh….”

He didn’t have anything. Tweek chewed his bottom lip and paused the movie.

“Are you sure? You’re not like…” he shrugged his shoulders in a way that meant he was asking Craig if he had taken any drugs recently. Because Tweek only really had comprehensive understanding of two modes of being and those modes were nervous or smashed. Craig shook his head and gestured to the screen.

“It’s nothing. Keep watching.”

He forced himself to sit still for the remainder of the movie.

 

…

 

Craig crawled under his blankets and ignored the fact that he could smell Tweek on his sheets from earlier that evening. His phone was clutched in his hand and under his pillow like he was hiding it away, and in the bathroom Tweek was brushing his teeth and medicating. Craig knew when he came back he would have toothpaste breath and a funny look, and he would spend ten minutes hunting for his cigarettes before remembering that he had put them in his hoodie pocket before he left to McDonalds. Maybe he would sit up and smoke three before he wiggled under his sheets, maybe he would go through the whole packet before he realised it was two am and Craig had already slipped into an uneasy sleep. Craig didn’t know, and the unsurity was killing him. But when he heard Tweek return and shut off the room light he pretended like he was already dozing so he didn’t have to sit up in half an hour and say

“Dude. It’s almost ten thirty. Go to sleep.”

Tweek shuffled around in the dark for a bit, until he found his lamp and switched it on with a click. Craig squeezed his eyes closed and listen to the bedsprings creaking as he sat down.

 _“Craig_?” a whisper through the darkness. Craig didn’t reply. His heart was beating hard, but slow. The pounding reverberated in his chest and in his skull like a drumbeat. “ _Are you awake?”_

When he didn’t reply, Tweek heaved a sigh, and a sound like he was letting himself fall back against his pillows made Craig run his tongue over his bottom lip. Holy fuck, he wasn’t going to do something weird that would shatter Craig’s perception of him even wider was he? Some dark, secret part of Craig had always wanted to wake up in the night to the sounds of Tweek jerking off, but instead the closest he got was that time he woke up because Tweek had accidentally cut himself with a pair of scissors and thought he was going to bleed to death. He was so close to hyperventilating Craig thought he was going to faint.

Craig squeezed his phone even tighter and found himself wondering if Tweek ever actually _had_. Masturbated that is. What was it he thought about when he rubbed one out? Was it the people he was passing by on Tinder, or was it fantasies of a nature Craig couldn’t even begin to imagine? Perhaps he had actually gone out and met his matches once or twice. Perhaps he wasn’t a college virgin after all.

Craig’s ears pricked when he heard Tweek roll over, and the sound of his cellphone lock screen being undone. He waited on for what felt like forever while Tweek busied himself checking whatever he usually checked on his cell, and as each second passed a horrible feeling like bile rose to the back of his throat. What if Tweek was checking his dating app? What if he was flicking through photos, accepting or declining, and what if in the process he came across Craig’s?

He almost vomited in fear at the thought. But then he remembered that Tweek had no way of knowing if Craig liked his picture. Tweek was a shy person, who wouldn’t _dare_ to like Craig back, and there would never be a match made and they would never need to talk about it. If Tweek asked Craig why he had a profile, then Tweek would have t admit to having one himself, and so it wasn’t like it was ever something he would have to deal with. Now or tomorrow or ever.

Eventually, he fell into a restless sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO i was re-reading the first chapter and I noticed a typo that said the words ‘Craig watched his eyebrows’ by mistake and I laughed so hard that I decided not to change it. Its probably the achievement that marks the apex of my comedic life, so removing it would doubtless damage my cultural legacy.

Life went on as usual for almost a week, and soon enough Craig found himself returning to his regular state of security. By Thursday, it was like it wasn’t even a thing that had happened, and it was starting to look like he could carry on pursuing strangers and spending time with Tweek without problems. He figured if Tweek hadn’t brought it up by now that must mean he hadn’t seen anything, and so he continued to use the app for the intended purpose. He had had four matches so far. Two of them were, upon second glance, not as attractive as he had hoped, and one was a complete sleazebag. The fourth one was okay, but he was also uncomfortably open about the fact that he actually already had a girlfriend and was just looking around for a little cock on the side. All the same, Craig was feeling reasonably optimistic - he carried his phone around him wherever he went in order to be assured that anyone who came up as a match with him would come through as soon as the match was relayed via the internet.

He was sitting in the library with Tweek when it happened. His companion had (he assumed) been using his phone to check meanings of certain words in the journal he was reading, and Craig had been reading articles on stupid humour websites in the hopes that they would inspire him to write one of his essays. When he heard the loud and embarrassing chime that indicated he had a new match, however, he stopped doing that almost immediately and flushed. Holy shit. Had he forgotten to turn his fucking sound off?

He quickly flicked over to his navigation screen, and froze up when he saw the new match flash up.

_Yves, 20. less than one mile away. Currently online._

He felt all of the colour drain from his face, and from the corner of his eye he saw Tweek sitting at the table next to him freeze.

What the fuck?

What the fuck, his mind was going onto overdrive, and his chest felt an awful lot like it was in a clamp. That had to be a dream right? He was dreaming?

He tried to pull himself out of it but found that questioning wether or not this was actually happening only made him feel like he was separating himself from reality. An unpleasant sensation to say the least.

When he finally managed to turn his head to look at Tweek, his blood turned cold, and then hot again.

Tweek was staring at him with wide eyes and lips parted in surprise. The way he was blushing made it clear that he had only liked the profile because he had thought Craig wouldn’t ever know.

But he did know. They both knew.

And nether wanted to bee the first to ask what they were supposed to do about it.

 

…

 

“Tweek, can I talk to you?”

“No, it’s inconvenient. I’m just leaving. Class and that.”

Craig watched Tweek scramble to find his cassette walkman (MP3 players cause headaches) and his left boot from his spot in bed, and he felt a bitter taste at the back of his tongue because since when had Tweek ever been to class on time? Not since the start of trimester, that’s when. He ground his teeth and considered throwing a lamp at him.

“Well can I talk to you after class?”

“Oh. Uh, well, I dunno. I mean, sure? I’m really late. _Fuck_.”

He almost broke the desk chair when he sat down to lace his shoes up, and Craig watched him blushing like he was on the brink of passing out. He had been like this for two days. If he kept it up, Craig was going to need to take some of his valium when he wasn’t looking because it was just so _nerve-wracking_. The anxiety was contagious, and Craig hated it so much he could probably punch holes in the walls if he wasn’t scared that doing so would mean loosing his bond. He sat there on his bed instead, watching Tweek struggle to do basic tasks, and thinking that if he wasn’t so fucking hot it wouldn’t be a problem. But he was, and maybe (just maybe) Craig wanted him to suffer for it.

“Where’s your class?”

“Uhm… not sure. Why?”

“Because I’m going to meet you there straight afterwards to make sure you don’t try and avoid coming back.”

Tweek laughed anxiously, and it was obvious that this was, in fact, his exact plan. 

“What? No, I will come back I promise.”

Craig didn’t believe him, and Tweek _knew_ Craig didn’t believe him, as he finished lacing his shoes and finally made his way toward the door without lifting his eyes up once. His hair was unbrushed and Craig was pretty sure the T-shirt he was wearing was the same one he slept in the night before.

Out of nowhere, Craig was struck by the thought that this particular shirt probably smelled very, very thickly of him, and he felt a pang of envy toward the poor unsuspecting bastard who would be stuck sitting next to him for an hour, breathing in the smell of his skin and coffee and deodorant and that strange, medicated scent he had sometimes after the weekend – like prescription box cardboard and sterile needles and blood.

Craig sighed and let him fall back against the pillow lamely.

“Whatever.”

Let him go and stay gone for all Craig cared. He could still find _someone_ to take him to dinner on this stupid app. Even if he had only had one other match since that day in the library and frankly, upon second inspection (or rather, after the other guy unironically said he wanted to ‘fuck you in the shithole’) that guy was gross as all hell.

He would rather be in bed with Tweek, touching his hair and his arms and that chest which Craig always thought looked warm and inviting but never dared to reach for even though his roommate was metres away. Someone gentle, or shy, and he had to be tender and the more Craig thought about how frustrating it was, this situation, the more convinced he became that Tweek was in fact the only person on the planet he was capable of wanting for some reason. The actual only one.

It didn’t seem fair. There were so many men in the world… men who didn’t use drugs. Men who didn’t line their beanies with aluminium foil. Men who weren’t _straight_ , or at least who were definitely gay, rather than occupying some grey and undefined space of mystery in between.

Craig groaned and rolled onto his belly. He wished he would just fucking _talk_ to him already, and dispel this horrible tension that had descended in between them...

Tweek left the room, and in the usual fashion he rattled the doorknob on the way out to make sure it locked. He might come back two, maybe three times over the course of the next two minutes to rattle it again and make _positive_ , before he would head to lessons. Sure enough, Craig listened to him leave, then come back and check three times before he didn’t come back, and Craig knew that at the end of his classes he would be almost sprinting back to the room to check if the door was still secure. Maybe then he would remember Craig was in there waiting for him, and freeze up, and he would have to run and hide someplace else because god knew that if Tweek Tweak couldn’t handle one thing it was dealing with minor problems.

Craig waited another ten minutes, until he was _certain_ the class would be under way, before he slid out of bed and inched carefully toward Tweek’s half of the room. Unsure what to do with himself, he plopped down on the end of his bed and had a look around the space from this angle. It looked pretty much the same… maybe a bit darker? The posters were the same, as was Craig’s unmade bed and the desks teetering with textbooks and empty coffee cups. The duvet felt different though, because Tweek was the kind of person to need a feather comforter while Craig got by on good old fashioned synthetic stuffing. Craig had laid on the thing before for movie watching purposes and such, but he had never really _noticed_ the difference in sensation.

He lay down carefully and curled up into a ball, so he could savour the feeling against the side of his cheek and throat, and breathed in the faded perfume of him. It seemed pathetic compared to the odour Craig imagined clung to the fabric of his shirt.

All the same, Craig dragged himself up the bed and let his head fall onto the pillows. He considered jerking off for a bit, because he never _had_ done it in Tweek’s bed before, and some part of him suspected it would be way better than just _thinking_ about being with him while he was getting off. He decided against it though – his shock and frustration had left him sort of not-that-horny and far too listless.

He gritted his teeth and hunted or his phone in his pockets.

If he wasn’t going to get anything out of this stupid match, then he may as well keep goddamned trying.

 

…

 

Tweek got home at around two pm. Craig had already showered, and dressed, and was just getting back from a tutor group himself when his companion slunk in the door as if he hoped Craig wouldn’t notice, and set his bag carefully onto the ground.

Craig took a deep breath, and spun around in his desk chair to point at him.

“Hey. You.”

Tweek jumped back visibly, his hand flying up to guard his breastbone as if Craig’s attention had physically wounded him.

“What?” he asked. Craig tensed his jaw and steeled his resolve again, before jabbing a thumb at the cellphone sitting on the desk behind him. If he didn’t just get right to it and ask, no one would ever bring it up again and it would always be this awful, unspoken thing between them. He knew it. Tweek knew it too, but he was pretending not to. Craig understood that this meant that if they didn’t speak about it now, it would ruin them. He had to clear the air as soon as possible, return everything to the way it was as soon as he could.

He would give anything to go back to the way things had been. The safe predictability of unrequited and completely secret love.

 “You wanna tell me why you were looking for hookups on tinder without me knowing?”

Tweek stared at him in utter shock, and then blinked.

“… Are you my Mom?” he asked, surprisingly rudely, before the filter that usually makes him stutter apologies and hide possibly offensive words could ruin it for him. “I mean, what? I mean, oh man. Craig, this is a bad conversation right now?”

“I disagree.” Craig pushed the screen of his laptop down a bit and turned his chair to face Tweek properly, and he liked to think he looked good and calm even though the butterflies in his stomach were vomiting. “I think it’s an important conversation. About things.”

“… What kind of things?”

Craig shrugged, unsure as to how to approach the specifics of the issue. Tweek’s ‘looking for men’ profile would be an interesting place to start. His confusion as to why Tweek would bother to like his profile was less pressing – as much as Craig would love to think Tweek liked him, he had to be realistic and admit that it was probably an accident.

“Well,” he took a deep breath, “for one, I guess about how you never mentioned that you were….gay?”

He had mixed feelings about throwing the G word out into the room like that, because he wasn’t sure how his roommate would respond. Tweek pulled a face caught halfway between humiliation and anger, and raked his hands through his hair.

“I’m not _anything,_ Craig. Jesus, can we just leave it?”

“No, I don’t want to leave it. You’re supposed to be my friend Tweek I can’t believe you never even told me about this.”

“Oh man, you are the _worst_ hypocrite. I’m not even going to begin pointing out what’s wrong with that.”

Tweek dropped down onto the end of his bed and started unlacing his boots in a fashion that was uncharacteristically irate. “I mean, maybe if you didn’t obviously hate me I would believe you? But I really don’t so sorry if you think I’m being a jerk about it.”

Craig stared at him in uncomprehending shock.

“Hate you?” he repeated. Tweek pressed his lips together in embarrassed defiance, and kicked off the first of his boots.

“Yeah. Like...  always got the feeling you never liked me that much. I sorta came to accept that you only hung around me because you didn’t know anyone else. Which is fine, because its not like I know anyone either, but it never seemed like I could talk to you about personal stuff even though you’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve got. Also, you’re really intimidating. Maybe you know that already? I dunno.”

Craig’s eyebrows flew upwards in disbelief. Had he really been that aloof in his daily life, or was Tweek just overreacting again? He was notorious for misreading signals and being high strung, after all, although Craig always _had_ got the impression that people didn’t like him. Bank tellers and baristas and anyone he had to interact with tended to shy away... perhaps Tweek wasn’t wrong. Perhaps Craig was just really bad at giving off friendly vibes.

“I am?”

Tweek nodded, eyes fixing anywhere but Craig’s face, and kicked his second boot off his foot.

“God yes. But still I hang around you. Because… I dunno.” He shrugged and fiddled with a thin patch of denim on the leg of his jeans. “I’m lonely I guess. And I’ve realised that using stupid dating apps is a great way to get lonelier because no one ever matches with me. When I _do_ match with people they are terrible weirdos. Even by my standards. Maybe I’m doing it wrong?”

Craig’s eyelashes fluttered as he tried to figure out what it was that he could possibly be doing incorrectly. It was a pretty idiot proof app, but factoring Tweek’s idiosyncrasies into the use of it may complicate matters. For one, Tweek probably wouldn’t like that many profiles for far of being matched with a maniac or a vampire, and for two Tweek probably wouldn’t respond to any unsolicited messages in case doing so gave away some vital detail about his personal life.

 “… I matched with you.” Craig reminded him coolly. Tweek shrugged and turned his gaze down toward his socked feet. He always wore black socks for some reason, and Craig supposed that was smarter than wearing white ones because at least black socks didn’t discolour over the passage of days.

“I liked your profile because I didn’t think you would find out.”

“I wouldn’t have found out if you disliked it.”

“Well I don’t know! I was surprised! I hadn’t realised you were even trying to hook up so I panicked I guess.”

Craig scoffed before he could help it, and it was probably that exact manner of derisive behaviours that made people like Tweek think he was aloof and unpleasant.

“I wasn’t trying to ‘hook up’. I was _trying_ to find someone to date. What kind of a guy do you think I am?”

Tweek regarded him for a moment, looking so perplexed by this it might have been comical, in different circumstances.

“... You know tinder is for people who want to get laid, right?”

 “Yeah. So? Are you trying to tell me you were seriously trying to have sex with strangers over the internet?”

Craig thought he had him cornered with that. As far as he was concerned, there was no _way_ this could have been his intent. No way in the entire fucking world. Which made it very shocking when, after a significant pause, he replied

“… Uh, yes?”

And Craig recoiled. He felt as though Tweek had just slapped him.

Was he serious?

Was this just a weird, messed up dream? It could just be a side effect, from the ibuprofen he had taken that morning for a headache. Or maybe it was just a bad fantasy. Maybe Tweek was some kind of alien, or a bizarre projection of Craig’s confused little mind. Craig could have believed that, actually, because for a singular, very brief moment, he just didn’t look like Tweek anymore. How could he? Tweek wasn’t a sexual person. Tweek was a shy, bordering on anti-social guy. So it was kind of ridiculous that beyond all this disbelief, this disorientation, Craig also wanted to punch him, maybe even _murder_ him, for trying to hook up with men who weren’t Craig.

The thought of Tweek being intimate with anyone other than himself was so desperately upsetting he could have cried.

“... You want to fuck strangers?” he said, and Tweek didn’t say anything but he didn’t need to. His reply was still echoing in Craig’s head.

“Oh my god,” Craig turned his chair away and pushed the screen of his laptop back up so Tweek couldn’t see the wetness welling in his eyes. “Fuck you.”

He remained there bashing keys on his computer for five minutes, until with a frustrated groan and a loud swear Tweek stood up and yanked open his bedside drawer. He kept a box of cigarettes in there, a vaporiser and a few bottles of sedatives as well, but after rattling around blister packets and dead lighters he eventually found a pack of gum Craig recognised as the prescription stuff for quitting smoking and a pair of knitted gloves. Winter was settling in, and doubtless it would start snowing soon. 

“I’m going for a walk.” He murmured, pulling his gloves on and clearly trying to sound like he wasn’t bothered by this conflict. “Don’t bother texting me because I don’t have my phone.”

Craig flipped him off as he walked through the door, and Tweek only checked it once when he locked it.

 

…

 

Craig wasn’t able to sleep.

But he pretended to be resting when at exactly one am Tweek returned, and slipped carefully in the dorm room door.

“Craig?” he breathed quietly, and Craig curled his fingers in his pillow tight, because he was still hurt and still fucked off so the less he thought about his stupid beautiful face the better. Particularly when he heard Tweek rummage around and click on his bedside lamp. “Craig can you talk to me for a bit? I know you’re awake, you aren’t snoring.”

Craig resented that. He sat up immediately, startling his so-called-friend, and opened his mouth to retort without even missing a single beat.

“I don’t fucking snore.” He said. Tweek shook his head like he was trying to avoid arguing, but his expression gave away exactly what he thought of that denial.

“Uhm, okay. Well that’s great. But I’ve been thinking.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and dropped his gum and bedroom keys to the floor. Craig glanced down and noticed that wherever the fuck he had been, he hadn’t been wearing his shoes – his socks looked cold and wet as hell and frankly, the second hand discomfort made him want to cringe.

“Are you stoned?” He asked as a precaution, because the last several conversations he had had with this boy which started ‘I’ve been thinking’ had ended in a long soliloquy about 9/11 and alien abductions and some kind of bizarre eyes-wide-shut style cult based in their home town. Tweek gave him a look which might have been construed as pissed off, but also could have been the result of taking insult at the implication he was not worth listening to when he was high.

“No. Unless this shitty gum counts.” He kicked the packet he had dropped on the floor peevishly and Craig tried not to be kind of amused by his distaste – he remembered the first day Tweek had tried the stuff, and his horror at discovering that the so called ‘freshmint’ flavour was more like a peppery, paint smell kind of taste that someone may have waved a sprig of mint near at some point during the production.

“Ok. What do you want?”

Tweek sighed and laced his fingers together carefully, as if doing so would lend him those last few seconds he needed to get his thoughts in order.

“I want to know… I mean, obviously you liked my profile first right? Otherwise it would have matched immediately.”

Craig eyes pinged to narrow slits, and Tweek avoided looking at him as best he could because clearly, having lived in fear of Craig for so long, he had figured out this was the best way to pretend he wasn’t terrified by his room mate.

“Mmm…”

“So I was wondering. If you don’t like me, then _why_ would you have done that? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe I had misread the whole… dynamic between us, and misread your personality, and that’s my fault because I was too nervous to actually _try_ and get to know you better. Is that okay?”

Craig’s eyes fluttered and he tried to keep his hands from shaking by pulling a small fistful of his duvet into his palms.

 _Fucking asshole,_ he reminded himself. _Don’t let yourself be taken in by this horny unappreciative deviant._

“Why are you asking me if it’s okay? They’re your thoughts.”

“Well, because I guess… I want to figure out why you got so upset earlier. I didn’t _mean_ to make you angry – I was just saying how I felt living here with you for half a year. If I’d thought about it _more_ I might have realised that if you didn’t like me then you wouldn’t have offered to room with me, and lots of other stuff as well I guess I don’t know… Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m making a huge mess of this.”

Craig considered making this whole painful process easier and just telling him that he had liked his profile on accident, but he felt vaguely like doing so would be detrimental and probably not all that important at this point in time. Besides, Tweek was completely missing the point. He still didn’t seem to have realised that Craig was pissed because of that _other_ thing. The thing about the sex. He huffed, and rather than clarify any of this he lay back down in his bed.

“Of course I fucking like you. I like you _fine_. Sorry I never made it explicit but I figured you would have worked it out cause you know. We _live_ together?”

Tweek spluttered, and even in the low lamplight Craig could see his face colouring in embarrassment.

“Well I don’t know! Give me a break. Its not _news_ that I have some issues with people.”

“Yeah. I know it. Whatever. Just go to fucking bed. What time is it? It must be like… two o’clock!”

He was alarmed when he checked his watch, that Tweek had been out that long. Where had he _been_? Was he at a coffee store? ihop? Had he lingered outside the room for hours, to anxious to go in and face confrontation?

“Yeah. I would have come back sooner, but…”

Craig knew that meant that he _had_ been standing outside too nervous to try and come in, and for some reason this made him want to laugh even though he knew it wasn’t funny. Maybe it was a laugh of discomfort, or embarrassment, or a laugh that might have covered up the way that Tweek’s anxieties were something that really _upset him_. Sometimes even disturbed him. And he felt selfish and cruel for thinking that too. Maybe he was just sensitive because of the feelings he had toward him.

He sighed, feeling his eyes tear up again, and turned his face down into his pillow.

“S’okay.” He murmured, wishing he could just shake him. Kiss him. Do anything to convince him that Craig wasn’t someone he needed to be afraid of. Craig wanted to be that person he never had to guard his thoughts around, he wanted to be that person who saw Tweek as Tweek, the guy who liked pseudo-archaeology and didn’t know how to use a high-lighter. He never wanted to hear Tweek apologise to him again, which made it really difficult to listen to what he said next.

“Mm. Well, also, I wanted to say sorry for… you know. Wrecking your whole dating app thing. And for taking up all your time and making it so that you can’t meet new friends or… uh, boyfriends.”

Oh Jesus.

Craig was glad his face was in the pillow because otherwise, he could only imagine the expression (and flush) that would be ravaging his usually stoic features. Probably somewhere between ‘in public naked’ humiliation and ‘kicked in the balls of the heart’ pain. That kind of thing.

“Don’t say that.” He snapped, but it came out muffled. “Now fuck off already. I’m trying to sleep.”

Tweek sat there a little longer in silence, and Craig could _feel_ that he was staring at the back of his head and trying to figure out what he could mean. Were there any unsaid intentions in his words? Was he mad, hurt, or lying? Obviously, Tweek couldn’t figure it out, because he sighed and flopped down on his bed eventually, still fully clothed, and turned off the light.

“Goodnight.” He said. Craig grunted, and pulled his knees up to his chest tight.

He still couldn’t sleep. And he knew that lying on top of his sheets and staring at the shadows on the ceiling, Tweek couldn’t either.

And there were still so many things he probably wanted to say.

 

…

 

His lecture was difficult, and Craig sorely regretted not taking notes on gravity during that class he had earlier in the semester because apparently, the content was important and relevant to now, but the past was the past and there was nothing he could do about it. Craig could only deal with the consequences.

He struggled through his lesson anyway, forcing himself to focus even though he was confused and the night before, he had not managed to get back to sleep. When he left that morning, his room mate had been pretending to be unconscious, but Craig was so embarrassed for both of them that he didn’t call him out on it and left wordlessly – now he was feeling the regret, and when he checked his watch at the end of his lecture he realised that it was only ten twenty am. He could very reasonably still be cocooned in his duvets and dozing right now. Hovering restlessly between waking anxieties and nightmares yes, but cosy all the same.

He didn’t usually drink coffee, but he _really_ fucking needed a hot drink.

He decided to head over to the bookstore on campus, which had a small barista bar and sandwich window at the back, to try and procure himself a hot, chocoalately wake up call.

And in theory, it was a good idea. He made his way over effortlessly, carried by the flood of people moving between lectures and workshops, and broke away from the crowd when ‘Java the Hutt Coffee & Books’ was about twenty feet away. It was a small shop, with no remarkable features, and he would have _liked_ to have been able to just slip in and grab his drink without having to stand around and stare at the shelves of boring books all day but alas, when he arrived he found himself facing an ultimatum he wasn’t prepared for:

Wait and get a drink, or leave and get nothing – there were already about seven people in line ahead of him and Craig really, _really_ wasn’t feeling up to that right now.

He had been very close to selecting the latter option when he felt someone touch his shoulder cautiously. Somewhat alarmed, he spun around to tell them to fuck right off, but he felt the words die in his throat when he saw who it was.

“… Morning.” Tweek croaked shyly, in his just-woke-up smokers voice, and Craig tensed, feeling his cheeks colouring despite himself. Goddamnit, why did he _insist_ on walking around in public in his sleeping clothes? It always gave him a dishevelled, sensual look Craig wanted to rub all over his body. Today’s t-shirt was a plain and slightly creased navy one. The cotton looked so warm and worn and soft Craig’s knees went weak just thinking about it. 

“What do you want?”

“Well, I came to get a coffee, but I guess it’s kind of busy?”

Craig glanced immediately to his left hand, in which he was already holding a paper cup of coffee probably made from instant granules and water from the hot tap in heir bathroom.

“You have coffee.”

“… Mm.” Tweek looked down at the cup and swirled the blackish, unlovely liquid it contained. Craig wanted to punch him for being so disgusting when he brought the cup to his lips and drained it in one go.

“No I don’t.”

He crumpled the cup in his fist, and Craig had to turn away from him to hide his face because that _wasn’t cute_ or appealing or sexy in any way but clearly his smiling apparatus hadn’t received news of this yet. Craig was supposed to be _mad_ at him.

“Well if you’re buying coffee,” he said, as sourly as he could manage, “You can buy me a hot chocolate too.”

“What, now?”

“No, next week. _Yes_ now. Of course.”

Tweek whined and dug around in his jeans pockets for change.

“I’m sorry. I got confused. Are you still mad at me?”

Craig very much wanted to say yes. He wanted to _scream_ it, at the top of his lungs, and chant ‘yes yes yes’ into Tweek’s ear until he had to curl up and clap his hands around his head and beg for it to stop. Craig wanted to write yes in the sky, and carve it into the earth, and rearrange the stars so they spelt those damning letters in perfect order, but he couldn’t, because he knew that Tweek was probably going to be very upset at that. Because he was an asshole.

Instead, Craig shrugged, and Tweek sighed.

“How many times should I say I’m sorry?”

“None.” Craig folded his arms and stared down the line in front of them. Inch by inch it moved closer to the til where customers ordered their drinks. “I don’t _want_ you to apologise. It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing…”

Craig groaned and rolled his eyes.

“ _God_ , Tweek. Are you my girlfriend? ‘Talk to me about _feelings_ , Craig. I want to know what you are thinking about, Craig’. Just… chill. Can we move past it already?”

 “Hm.” Tweek shrugged and gazed down at the shoes of the person in front of them. “I guess so. If you want. But just, I was wondering. Have you uh… you know? Had any success since…?” he gave Craig a sideways kind of look, and Craig felt himself blush. Asking about that felt a little bit audacious, if Craig was going to be honest.

 He shook his head, though, because he hadn’t. He had actually deleted the stupid app off his phone because so far all had brought was trouble.

Tweek sighed and hooked a lock of hair behind his ear.

“Neither. As soon as anyone says we should meet I start getting anxious and I can’t go through with it. Is that normal for this kind of thing?”

Craig had to take a deep breath before he answered, because he wasn’t sure he could contain his irritation otherwise.

“I don’t know, Tweek. I have absolutely no idea.”

“Have you ever met up with a date or…?”

“No. Only you. This horribly awkward conversation is as close a thing to a ‘date’ I’ve ever had. It’s tragic, actually.”

Tweek seemed surprised by this. An uncomfortable laugh slipped out and he immediately clapped his hand over his mouth to hide it.

It was kind of cute, and Craig had to force his expression straight.

“Does this count?” he asked. Craig didn’t want to say yes, or no, so instead he shrugged and tried to look flippant and cool. Tweek nudged him gently with his shoulder and ushered him forward in the line. “I can take you on a real date you know. If you wanted to.”

He said it so quietly, that Craig almost thought he misheard it.

“What?”

Ruddy red roses of colour immediately started blooming in Tweek’s cheeks, like they did when he was feeling particularly nervous or when, during high school, the teacher would call on him to answer a question in class.  

“I dunno. I mean, we matched right? So maybe… a date? Uh, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s just a thought. If you were uh…” he made a non-specific kind of gesture with his hands, and Craig felt his stomach plummet into his ankles.

“... Are you asking me this because you like me, or because you feel guilty for fucking up?” he asked, keeping his voice soft in order to avoid rousing the attention of strangers or line participants. Tweek pulled a pained kind of expression and his shoulders hunched into a messy shrug.

“I don’t _not_ like you? It’s not like you’re ugly or anything. Oh god, this is embarrassing. I’m sorry I asked this is a terrible place to have this conversation. What if someone _hears?_ ”

“Calm down.” Craig had to try very hard to keep his wits about him while Tweek grew flustered, mostly on account of the fact that his own legs were very nearly giving way beneath him, and in an effort to bring the boy back to the present bubble in which they conducted their exchange he reached between them and touched his wrist. It wasn’t enough to make him punch or kick in shock, but it was enough to snap him back. Plant his feet firmly on the ground and drive the conversation home. “No one will hear us. We don’t need to tell anyone if you don’t want to, either. If you aren’t fucking with me or something, then I would definitely be okay to go on a date with you. I would be happy to.”

“Really?” he looked so shocked that Craig could have kissed his mouth right then and there. How was he so _beautiful_? How was he so dreamy and phantasmic and handsome and real, Craig thought he would never be able to know because he had already spent years trying to figure it out. Maybe it was his loose grip on reality, that made his pupils blown and his movements erratic. Maybe it was the drugs, or the paranoia, or his personality that made him so weird and wonderful and confusing like a patchwork quilt of qualities Craig needed to keep warm. To be safe and happy and when he nodded, and Tweek’s face broke into a leg melting smile, he felt a heat like the sun rising swell up in his body and tickle his chest and the back of his tongue and he wanted to latch on to him, this radiant creature, and clutch him until their edges started to fuse together atom by atom by atom.

“Sure. We matched right?”

Tweek nodded and tried to pull himself together enough to reply.

“Right. Yes. That’s true. So uh, is dinner okay?”

“How about a movie?”

“At the cinema?”

“No, in our bedroom. We can get pizza ordered and that way we don’t even have to go out.”

Tweek seemed to like this idea a lot – if he wasn’t going to classes, or fast food, or on late night star gazing jaunts on ecstasy, he didn’t much care for ‘going out’. There was too much pressure to look tidy. To blend in. To smile at strangers politely when they made eye contact instead of yelping and making the hurried sign of the cross over his chest.

“Okay. Good. What time are you finished? Four o’clock?”

“Four o’clock.”

He nodded and the strand of hair he had put behind his ear slipped loose again.

“Okay then.” He was so obviously flustered, trying very pointedly not to look Craig n the eye. “It’s a date.”

 


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW WARNING - Masturbation and references to drug use

It was weird – watching a movie before had been so effortless and normal, but now in the aftermath, even though they were doing the precise same thing, nothing really about it felt the same.

For one, Craig was now more conscious of Tweek’s leg next to his than he had ever been, and his smell like he had showered recently underneath the perfume of the sleep shirt he had put back on was making Craig feel like he was tingling and tickling all over. His breathing was softer, his voice sounded huskier, and whenever he moved his hands to reach for pizza or a napkin Craig could see him shaking like he could feel it too. The tension. The still unasked questions. Craig’s mind kept gravitating to sex, and the question of Tweek’s motivations in relation to sex. Tweek wasn’t just trying to get into his pants was he? Craig wasn’t sure how well he could handle that. He sort of wanted to ask, but wasn’t sure he was emotionally ready for the answer.

At least, it seemed as though Tweek was too preoccupied to be thinking about things like fucking. Craig couldn’t even tell if Tweek was _comfortable_. He kept avoiding Craig’s eye, and moving like he was terrified Craig was going to damage him somehow, and Craig disliked the feeling even though he wasn’t sure how to make him stop doing it.

They were half way through watching _Thor_ when he decided he couldn’t take it any more.

He paused the film and gave Tweek a very, very chilly stare.

“Are you okay?”

“Me? Yes. Sure. I’m fine. You want some more Pepsi?”

He reached down to pick the bottle up off the floor next to the bed, and Craig felt his eyes gravitate to the little slip of skin on his hip that that particular motion revealed. Despite hearing the unusual tension in his voice, Craig didn’t say anything until he was sat back up and the skin was gone, because looking at places on his body that Craig didn’t usually get to see kind of made him a little hot under the collar. He reminded himself firmly what it was he was supposed to be asking, and pushed on.

“No. Thanks. You’re acting weird. Weirder than usual.”

“I am?” Tweek’s eyebrows flew up and he fumbled with the Pepsi bottle lid. As he opened it, the contents made a soft hissing sound, and Craig observed with a sinking stomach as he uncapped the beverage _before_ reaching for the glasses set on the bedside table. Naturally, he fumbled and almost lost his balance. The bottle of Pepsi slipped out of his grip and landed on the carpet next to them. Tweek swore so loudly Craig wouldn’t have been surprised if someone came knocking to see what they were up to.

“Oh my god, Craig can you pass me a towel from the laundry?”

Craig sighed, and pulled himself up off the bed to fetch one.

This wasn’t the evening he had envisioned.

Craig had sat in classes all afternoon with his legs crossed and his mind fixed on the way he wanted this date to go. Despite himself, he had even considered how if the mood was right, Tweek might make a move to fuck him. Would Craig be willing to go along with it if he did? Would he be okay with giving up his virginity for the sake of getting to be close to his crush for just an incremental window of time? Craig didn’t have any way to know, but he had imagined the way Tweek would sweep him into the room and kiss him as soon as he had finished shutting the door. The way the bed would creak as they fell into it and Craig got to slide his hands under his friends clothing, and feel strange hands rubbing him through the crotch of his jeans for the first time. Would Craig get to press his tongue inside Tweek’s mouth, and learn what he tastes like when he was horny? Would they go further than that, and test the boundaries of an unnamed connection? And if they did, Craig wondered nervously, would he be brave enough to say he liked it? Depending, of course, on wether or not he liked it at all...

Despite his fantasies, however, there hadn’t been anything like that when they returned to the room. If possible, Tweek had been even more jittery than usual, but otherwise everything was the same. This was less a disappointment than a relief, and Craig knew that it was one thing to _think_ about a thing like fucking. Actually trying to do it was another thing entirely.

He threw Tweek a towel and defeated, he sat back down on the bed while his company made an effort to mop up the soda.

“I thought this was supposed to be a date.” He mused, listening to the sound of towel scrubbing carpet and the nervous little sounds he made as he tried to soak it all up before it stained.

“It is a date!” Tweek insisted, not letting up on his scrubbing, and Craig sighed.

“No its not. People do dates and it’s like… I dunno. They try and…”

He wanted to say ‘get to know each other romantically’, but he didn’t want to accidentally freak Tweek out.

“Well, you’re the one who wanted to stay here instead of going to dinner.”

Tweek stopped scrubbing and sat up straight. He looked strange down on the floor like that, his legs were far too long and too bony. He finally turned his face to Craig and looked at him, and when he did Craig felt his belly fill with heat. It made him _hungry_. Like he had just swallowed something that made him feel starved for closeness. Contact. Anything.

“Well I’m sorry, would that have made things easier for you?”

Tweek sighed and let his head fall uselessly against the side of the bed.

“No _I’m_ sorry.” He said. “This is kind of weird for me. I’ve never thought of myself… dating anyone before. I figured no one would ever want to date me and I definitely never thought someone like _you._ ” He looked thoughtful for a moment, before an expression of horror passed over his features.

“Not that you aren’t great! I didn’t mean it like I was _disappointed_. I’m not disappointed, I think you’re great. But wow you make me really nervous and I just – _shit_.”

His animated talking and hand gestures had knocked the bedside table, very nearly sending the bottle of Pepsi tumbling to the floor again.

Craig sighed and rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling.

“Tweek, I _really_ don’t hate you, okay? I feel like you still think I hate you, and I don’t. I never have.”

“I know! But it’s different right? Getting my brain and my feelings all synchronised takes a while. I still can’t really believe this is even happening…”

“Well, me neither, but here we are.” He paused for a moment, weighing his options, then figured that of he was in for the penny he may as well go in for the pound. “And I have a really big, really embarrassing crush on you, just so you know. I hope you’re happy with yourself - it’s wrecked my life.”

And just like that, it was out there on the table in front of them. As easy as saying a handful of words. The most stunning thing about the confession, though, was that in all the years they had known each other, Craig had not once considered telling him about this. Or rather, he hadn’t thought about telling him about it yet.

God, how awkward.

For a moment, Craig wished he could leave his body and depart this earthly realm.

Tweek didn’t say anything for a few seconds. His silence sounded absolutely stricken.

“I’m sorry.” He managed after a moment, his voice trembly and thin like reeds in water. “I didn’t even know you were gay. I didn’t _mean_ to…”

“Uh, dude. Don’t apologise. It just kind of happened. You didn’t have much of a choice.”

With his guts sloshing around uncomfortably in his body, Craig turned onto his side and looked at Tweek sitting there, on the floor next to the bed. His roommate chewed the inside of his cheek fretfully and tried not to meet his eyes.

“But I don’t understand… why? I mean, I’m really… something.”

Craig thought that was a particularly eloquent way of summing him up. He grunted his agreement, and waited for Tweek to turn pink and get flustered and maybe stumble something about being gay too, about always secretly harbouring a crush on him, and crawling up onto the bed so they could embrace in a fashion reminiscent of Craig’s afternoon fantasies. That would be perfect right now. A dreamlike conclusion that seemed too good to be true, but _god_ he could ever hope.

He was surprised by the honesty of the statement which followed.

“It kind of makes me uncomfortable that I’ve been _living_ with you and you never told me how you felt. If I had known I really would rather have dormed with a stranger.”

“… What?”

Tweek flushed and shrugged, like he wasn’t sure how to make that sound less unkind than it was.

“I… I dunno. Maybe if you had told me a few months ago I would have been really grossed out. I wouldn’t have wanted to share a room and we wouldn’t be in this mess because… I uh…”

He trailed off and started twisting the ends of his hair fretfully between sticky, Pepsi covered fingers. Craig felt his skin prickle in discomfort and embarrassment. What was happening here, exactly? Was Tweek going to tell him they couldn’t talk any more? He should have been prepared for this, but because he hadn’t intended to tell Tweek about his little infatuation yet, flat out rejection had never occurred to him as a possibility at this time. He had assumed that from here, they would either get together, or they would continue to edge around each other at arms length, avoiding the question of their respective orientations and wether or not it would be logical for them to have sex.

 If Tweek didn’t want to be associated with him, why had he asked him on a date?

“Tweek, I’m confused.” Craig sat up, and he saw Tweek wince even though his face was inclined downwards, his gaze fixed on a powerpoint on the far wall of the room. “First you say you _will_ take me on a date, then you tell me you don’t want to share a room with me? You do understand what taking someone on a date implies, right?”

This made him splutter, and Craig felt a painful twist in his belly watching him try and pull his thoughts together.

“ _Yes._ Stop saying things before I’ve finished telling you what I mean! I wouldn’t have asked you out if I didn’t like you too, you fucking asshole.”

Craig blinked and drew back in shock.

“Whoa. Sore spot much?”

“Yeah. Well. Can I finish now maybe please?”

Craig pressed his lips together and nodded. His heart was hammering like a bass drum in his chest. Tweek sighed, and stopped playing with his hair.

“I never liked anyone before.” He said. “Then I came here and shared a room with you and being around you all the time it just… dude, it fucked with my head so bad. Sometimes I felt like you were controlling me because I wanted to be around you all the time. I guess I just wanted to see more of you? Like, I know what you look like when you wake up, right? And that’s important to me, because I’m the _only one_ who knows that. It made me feel so _lonely_ , because suddenly I wanted to know everything about you, but you were always so unattainable and I genuinely believed you didn’t like me at all. It was… a lot of pressure, to edge around you and act like I always did. Like we were just… I dunno”

His shoulders sagged and tiredly he let himself slump against the edge of the bed.

“And I really like you a whole lot too, so I wish that I was better at this. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“You’re not fucking it up.”

“Tell that to the carpet.”

Craig sniggered and patted the bed next to him softly.

“Come back here then, and say more stuff about how I’m cute first thing in the morning.”

Tweek flushed bright red and sat rigid, upright.

“I didn’t say that!”

“It was pretty much implicit in what you were just saying.”

Craig wasn’t going to tell him, that he was pretty beautiful first thing in the morning too.

 

…

 

Craig sat silently, watching as Tweek scrolled through the IMDB trivia for the movie they had just finished watching. It was something Craig had never seen him do before, but he insisted he has always checked the trivia every time he sees something new, and Craig realised that in actual fact, he _had_ seen him do it but he had just never noticed. Usually, when they were done watching a film he absconded back to his own mattress, and concealed his feelings of emotional frustration behind the shield of the duvet spread over his bed.

Hesitantly, he let his head fall onto Tweek’s shoulder, and his roommate stiffened all over at the contact – Craig was almost certain that inside Tweek’s chest his heart was scampering faster than a hamster in a wheel, not just because of his body language but because Craig’s heart was racing too, and a nervous shivery sweat was starting to spread over his palms. His mouth felt dry and his stomach full of ticklish wriggling. He forced himself to remain slumped against Tweek anyway, and pointed as steadily as he could to the screen.

“Colm Feores makeup took five hours to apply.” He commented, as though he found this particular fragment of information interesting in any way. “Imagine that. Sitting there for five hours with someone hovering around your face.”

Tweek hummed, his tone sounded squeezed and a little uncomfortable.

“I don’t think I could deal with that.” He said eventually. “I can hardly sit still for half an hour anyway.”

“… You’re sitting pretty still now.”

This observation only succeeded in making Tweek laugh awkwardly, and Craig’s lips twisted into a wry half-smile. He wondered if Tweek’s mind was inching in the same direction his was. Shyly, he turned his face inward an increment, letting his nose brush softly against the crook of his roommates neck. If he closed the inch between Tweek’s throat and his lips, he thought he would probably be able to feel the vein fluttering there, and drink up his pulse as if he was feeding off the adrenaline in his blood.

“Sorry.” Tweek apologised, closing his laptop without even bothering to finish reading the bloopers and technical facts. “I’m distracted.”

“By what?”

“By you.” He turned his face down, and now their noses were millimetres apart. Craig was startled by how intense his eyes looked from this close up, and thrilled by the details of his lashes. His eyebrows. The puffy bruised creases under his eyes. “Your hair smells nice.”

“It’s just shampoo.”

Craig was lying – he always made sure to use leave in conditioner in his hair as well, but he didn’t want Tweek to know that the thing he was smelling was in fact the product Craig had ‘borrowed’ from his sister last July. That embarrassing tidbit was probably best left unmentioned.

“Well that’s cool.” Tweek smiled nervously, and Craig suddenly remembered that he didn’t use shampoo. Instead he rinsed his hair in vinegar weekly, and the bathroom always smelled vaguely acidic afterwards. Craig sniggered and pressed his face in closer, and for a moment he could hardly believe that this was reality. That he was alive. He felt so light, so dizzy with euphoria, because if he had told himself a week ago that he would be here this close to Tweek Tweak, he would have had to call himself crazy. After all, Tweek was the unachievable. The unthinkable goal he would probably spend the rest of his life chasing. And he was low-key discomfited that he had had to turn to a mobile hook up app to make his stupid daydreams and shameful fantasies reality.

“Is it?”

“I mean… it’s not _uncool_. I don’t think.”

He seemed lost I thought for a moment, and Craig gnawed thoughtfully on his bottom lip. Would he notice if he brushed his mouth against his skin just briefly? Would he be able to pass such contact off as an accident? He let his eyes shutter closed and focused on breathing Tweek in. On examining his perfume, or his sweat smell, or anything Craig could find that he hadn’t noticed before. He didn’t find it, although he did plunder the hidden depths of scents that he had only previously enjoyed in passing. After a while, Tweek relaxed and let his head fall against Craig’s.

“Hey Craig?”

“Mm?”

“Did you… you know? Want me to kiss you?”

Craig was not expecting to be asked that so directly. He sat bolt upright, and tried not to look embarrassed. Was it _that_ obvious what he was thinking? God, why did Tweek have to be the kind of person who thought shit like that out loud? He hoped he wasn’t coming across like some kind of sex-fiend or anything. Craig wasn’t sure yet if that was an air he wanted to give off.

“What? Why? Do you not want to?”

Tweek, who had promptly turned the colour of beetroot, shook his head and waved his hands in a way that said ‘Craig, please don’t hit me’.

“No! I mean, I do. I do want to kiss you. But if you don’t want to that’s okay too!”

Shamefaced, his eyes fixed downwards, on the foot of his bed, and Craig felt his insides turn over.

Their first kiss then. Was this it? This was not anything like what Craig had planned. It was far more awkward.

“You can kiss me if you want to.” He said, and Tweek nodded tersely, although he still didn’t make a move to actually do it. Craig wondered if he had heard him say it at all.

“… I said you can kiss me.” He repeated nervously, tilting his head and trying to see Tweek properly. The boy kept averting his eyes, and it was horribly inconvenient. “Hullo. You in there?”

He almost fell off the bed in surprise when Tweek jerked upwards, grabbing his wrist and pulling him firmly toward him.

“Close your eyes.” He insisted, and his voice sounded breathy and tight.

Too shocked to resist, Craig did as he was told to, and the next moment he was feeling someone’s unpracticed mouth pressing against his. Tweek’s lips were chapped, but a little wet, and they were warm and tasted like nothing in particular despite Craig often wondering if they would taste like coffee. Maybe sugar. Nicorette mint gum?

He felt himself rushing hot and then cold all over, his legs and arms filled with a numb cotton wool feeling he could not get rid of, and when Tweek’s tongue slipped between his lips and against his teeth it was like feeling something hot and delightful sinking down to the marrow of his bones. He moved his tongue to meet it, lips parting and head tipping to accommodate a deeper kiss. And much to his dazed delight he soon felt himself being pressed against the pillow, pinned down under Tweek’s reasonable weight.

They broke apart, and Tweek was hovering over him, his breathing a little ragged and his cheeks red with feeling.

“Okay?” he asked. Craig nodded.

He closed his eyes and lifted his chin up expectantly, and like they had been doing this for almost their whole lives Tweek took the invite.

And much of the evening passed in that fashion, exchanging slow kisses and mapping the terrain of one another’s mouths.

 

…

 

The clock said two fifty seven. Yet again, Craig was unable to sleep. Every five minutes he found himself rolling over to check the clock, and investigate how much time had passed. In the bed next door, Tweek was breathing steadily – Craig could see his outline in the darkness, a bulky masculine shape described by loose grey sweatpants and a singlet, and he thought that given his soft breathing and the stillness of his body against the sheets, tonight was one of those rare occasions he slept during moonlight hours.

Craig had shared a room with him for half a year, and he knew better than anyone that whenever Craig got close to drifting off, Tweek was almost certainly going to still be awake on his laptop or phone. When Craig woke up most mornings, Tweek was usually already at his desk rummaging furiously through papers. One time, Craig woke up at five thirty am and his roommate was doing lines of coke off the bathroom sink. It had been a Tuesday, and Craig remembered trying to understand why, off all the days of the week, Tweek would want to get fucked up on a Tuesday. When he had asked, Tweek seemed astonished.

He had been operating on the understanding that it was actually very early Saturday. And Craig had asked himself (not for the first time) why it was he even liked this guy, and pretty much everything about him.

As he lay in bed thinking, his mind running circuits around his skull, Craig found himself asking the same question again. Not because he was shocked or uncomfortable this time, but rather because by all accounts, it made no sense. Tweek was nice, and Craig definitely saw him through rosy glasses, but take that fantasy of Tweek giving him gifts and neck rubs and valentines cards and the cold hard truth of the matter was that he was a total mess – Craig knew he wouldn’t always have such a handsome face, and once that was gone, would Craig have anything left to like him for? He tried to make a list of reasons why he shouldn’t allow himself to fancy him, and just like every time he had tried it before he was met with no success. Not with regards to finding reasons, but rather with convincing himself that these reasons should be enough to stop him feeling this particular way. Tweek was not a great catch. Tweek was a good friend, and he was good company, but he was accident prone and narcoticly liberal and frankly, as Craig started thinking about how he would raise the news of their dating to their families and mutual friends, it was _embarrassing_ to have to admit that he was massively and undeniably enraptured by this boy. Was he seeing things in him that others did not? He had to do his best to understand himself here. He had to rationalise what was going on inside his brain.

But he couldn’t.

He just could _not_.

Craig felt light headed and giddy. He kept thinking about his friends body warmth, and the way his weight had felt pressed along Craig’s own. He was tingling still, in all the places Tweek had touched him, and Craig tried to tell himself that it must have been hormonal but he didn’t believe that either. He was starting to think he had an idea why Tweek was so attractive. So addictive.

It was, most likely, entirely because he was beautiful. Not in his looks, which were subject to the passing time, but rather less tangibly in the way he _was_ – a little damaged and a little messed up, and vulnerable in a raw and honest way Craig loved. He could feel it in Tweek’s kisses, an intensity and sweetness that couldn’t be faked, and it was the same sweetness that made him panic when the guy at McCafe gave him the wrong coffee and he was too scared to inconvenience him by going up and complaining for it. The thing that Craig liked about Tweek most was his truthfulness – the way he embodied everything that constituted the chaotic and wonderful world he lived in, and ignored the scripts provided for him by those in the surrounding vicinity. Craig was envious of this, and in awe of him, and he still couldn’t believe that in all his bare honesty Tweek _did_ like him. He really did. Enough to hold Craig down and glide his tongue over the roof of his mouth, and to let his hair tickle the edges of Craig’s face while they twisted and tumbled and made nervous first explorations of each others bodies.

Craig was getting hard just thinking about it.

He swore to himself, and threw off his sheets. It was warm in the dorm room, and so he hadn’t bothered to make his bed properly before crawling into it. The decision to hop beds had been a hard one – Tweek’s fierce kisses had petered after a while, giving way to languid, extended pressings of mouth against mouth, and after a while Craig’s lips felt so hot and bruised that he couldn’t even do that any more. He needed to pull away. Not kissing, it had been awkward in the skinny bed – between them they had too many arms and legs, and Tweek kept shuffling around like he didn’t want Craig to observe he had a hard on. Which he did.

 _Are you ready for sleep?”_ he asked, and his voice sounded like it did in the mornings – all rough and heady and erotic.

“Yeah. I guess.’

Another short kiss – they parted. And Craig went on to lie awake while Tweek, obviously satisfied with this exchange, let himself slip without resistance into dreams.  

Craig had tried so hard to concentrate on sleeping, but every time he even got halfway close he remembered feeling Tweek’s boner against his leg. It was weird and jarring, feeling someone else’s erection touching him. Despite knowing all of the facts about having a dick, it was a different matter to experience it from the outside. Someone else’s dick seemed alien and unreal. This strangeness was probably what inspired his reluctance to seriously engage with his sexuality. The immediacy of someone else’s closeness, and the lingering smell of Tweek’s face against the curve of his shoulder, made Craig wonder if he was dreaming ore acutely than he ever had before. He wasn’t sure he liked that intensity. There was something deeply threatening about it.

He much preferred the security of getting off alone.

He nudged his own erection up under his underwear waistband out of habit, and in the dim light of his phone screen he hunted for a sweater on his floor. 

The bathroom he shared with Tweek was cramped, and the brightness of the light hurt his eyes when he walked in and switched it on. Fluorescent light gleamed on cracked white titles, and on the sink lay a single toothbrush, and a few long blonde hairs. Tweek’s dirty laundry hamper in the corner was filled with towels, and Craig observed with a sigh that they were out of toilet rolls. Rubbing his eyes sorely, he closed the door behind him and locked himself inside the bathroom. He drew the shower curtain around the unplugged hotplate and kettle sitting in the bathtub, so looking at the randomly placed devices would not distract him. Lowering the lid of the toilet seat, avoiding looking at his tired and flushed face in the mirror, he sat down on the toilet and scratched his nails testily across the long black hairs on his upper thighs. At least the bathroom was clean, he thought wearily. It always smelled like the bleach Tweek kept in a spray bottle under the sink.

God. Tweek.

For the first time in his life, Craig wondered if the two of them might live together _after_ college as well. Would he still keep the spray bottle of bleach then? Would he still make instant coffee over the bathroom tub ( _their_ bathroom tub) and leave his damp towels hanging on the hook on the back of the bathroom door? Thinking about being with him somewhere else made Craig’s stomach turn over. He bowed his head and closed his eyes against the glare of the bathroom lights. His left hand crept upwards under his sweater to his chest. His nipples were rigid from the cold of the bathroom floor on his feet. His chest was throbbing with his pulse and he felt light headed - Euphoric, but like he was about to vomit at the same time. When he started running his thumb over his left nipple, he felt his legs start quivering and he had to tense his muscles to stay quiet.

He wished that Tweek had not stopped kissing him. He wished that they hadn’t grown sleepy, or shy, and that Tweek could have continued kissing him forever because when they were locking tongues it felt like the easiest, most perfect sensation in the world. There was nothing outside of them then. No one else and nothing else in the world. But when they weren’t preoccupied by making out, Craig was almost overwhelmed by how bizarre this was. How simultaneously scary and frustrating the thought of actually being intimate and _not_ being intimate with someone could actually be. Craig had touched himself and thought about Tweek many times before today, but as he pinched and rubbed his chest he was almost afraid to give in to the aching between his legs. The reality was so goddamned close, and yet it had never, ever felt more like he would never want it to actually happen. He was perched quite precariously on the cusp of change, and he wondered how fast he would feel things in his life would shift if Tweek, the real Tweek who actually liked him, gave him an orgasm. Would it be different? the same? He had come so close today yet still, the knowledge eluded him.

He supposed he was glad of that.

He bit his lip and kept his eyes shut tight. He hated listening to the quiet creaking sound the cheep plastic toilet seat made when he leaned back, wiggling his spare hand down into the crotch of his undies. What if Tweek heard him? Imagine being interrupted by a knock, in the moments before he was just about to come.

No knock came, and with a shaky sigh Craig curled his palm around his dick, struggling at first to make himself comfortable and soon finding a slow, pleasant pace that might have had him forget he was doing this to himself. His mind found itself returning to Tweek, and the outline of his legs in grey sweatpants. He remembered Tweek in the summer, when he showered more and took less drugs and his hair was brushed and pulled up off his face.  Craig had watched him drink vodka and cranberry juice and eat sponge cakes, and he remembered thinking about Tweek lapping vodka and juice out of his navel and over the hollows of his hipbones. He remembered the smell of his skin warming in the sun, and the way he tanned to a pale, pretty gold. Sometimes he burned, and crispy skin peeled off his nose and shoulders, and he looked good then too because it seemed to amuse him, and Craig dressed in dark clothes and slathered in sun block dared to wonder what it’d be like if he let himself press against him and feel his hands creeping across his waist and his ass and down lower in between his thighs.

A small whine of frustration escaped him, and Craig slid a little lower on the toilet, his back pressed uncomfortably against the cistern and his eyes scrunched shut against the white light. Craig had always imagined Tweek jerked off like this, slid low in a chair with his lips parted and his legs opened wide. Craig had always imagined his expressions, and his dick, and the way his breathing sounded when it caught in his throat but now for some reason he could really _feel_ it. He was thrumming with the awareness of someone else’s sexuality, and it was making him feel on fire with lust. Desperation.

He imagined Tweek’s strong hands pinning him, his weight moving down his body to his hips, before with one final little glimpse upward Tweek would invite him to push back his hair and watch while he ducked his head and swallowed him down. The fantasy of his tongue, of his wetness and warmth, meant Craig didn’t last all that much longer. The knowledge that this could someday be reality was so startling that it made it even faster, and his climax came in a strange new way – slow at first and spreading, like a firework seeping up the blank night sky before it combusted. Relief rushed through him in a way that made him moan aloud.

He waited for a few moments afterwards, numb with disbelief, catching his breath, and ignoring the come dripping into his navel. He had surprised himself. Scared himself breathless.

He was shaking.

He was also very, very tired. He suspected that when he got back into bed, he would have no trouble falling asleep.


	4. The Fuckening

“It’s too early for this. You had better fucking impress me or I’m going to be _so mad_.”

“Uh, okay, but you know when you say things like that it really makes me nervous.”

Craig thought about saying that being woken up at six thirty am on a Saturday and instructed to put on his warmest clothes because the two of them were going on an excursion made _him_ nervous, but he decided against it and took another grumpy mouthful of his hot chocolate. Tweek had made it for him in the bathtub kitchenette, before he had made himself a veritable bucket of coffee and grabbed all the change he could possibly find on his desk and crammed it into his jacket pocket. The air was so chilly on their walk down to the bus stop that Craig’s breath misted, and the shells of his ears were cold and tingling even though he was wearing his favourite hat to keep them warm.

“Is this supposed to be some kind of a date again?”

It had been almost a week since their first date, and the numerous shy kisses, and late nights listening to the gentle sounds of his breathing in the bed next door were the only thing helping Craig through the assignment hand ins that had dogged him all week long.

“Yeah. Well, I was hoping so. The bus is supposed to be here now though… what if it doesn’t come? Oh god that would ruin everything…”

Craig rolled his eyes.

“The bus will come.” He said coolly, sliding closer to Tweek and discretely touching their hands together between them. “Why wouldn’t it?”

Tweek shrugged and Craig stared at him, thinking that his under eyes looked more bruised than usual and that his un-brushed hair made him look a little manic. Had he slept last night? Craig couldn’t remember, because he had been working on an assignment for a solid ten hours and so when he fell into bed he had fallen straight to sleep. Tweek’s other hand shook as he brought his coffee to his lips and gulped a mouthful, and Craig craned his neck to check the road in front of them.

No sign of the bus. And according to the schedule posted on the power pole they stood by it should have been here two minutes ago.

“What if we missed it?” Tweek asked.

“There will be another bus.”

“But by then it will be so busy! There will be so many people and I can’t go on a bus that has too many people on it.”

Craig didn’t want to ask why. He could imagine it, sure, but he chose not to. Tweek had always been particularly twitchy when he had to ride the school bus during their childhood, and after an extended period _not_ riding the bus (as well as suddenly finding himself on a buss full of persons with whom he was unfamiliar) the shock of suddenly returning to that habit was unquestionably going to cause him some trouble.

Duh. It was obvious.

Craig sighed and tried to press their shoulders a little closer together.

It bothered him, that after a week of hanging out as they normally would and trying as hard as possible to open lines of communication they might not have opened in the past, they still hadn’t reached an agreement on what to call this. Craig had hoped so hard that Tweek would be able to take the lead on establishing the perimeters of  their relationship, but despite knowing he shouldn’t have hoped for too much he was disappointed when he didn’t. Sitting facing one another on Tweek’s bed, talking about things like Tweek’s failure to find someone he was brave enough to interface with and Craig’s dislike for overtly public displays of affection, had resulted only in shy hand touching and kisses. Even though there was something so dreadfully _exciting_ about the sensation of fingers tied with his, Craig found himself unsettled when the thought of opening his mouth and asking that question that was nagging at the back of his mind. Did Tweek like him? Did he want to go out? Did he, in the future, intend on kissing Craig in places much less chaste than the lips or the back of his hand? Why hadn’t he said anything about it yet?!

Honesty, this inability to make a their mutual intentions clear was starting to make Craig feel like they were only playing make pretend at dating.

Did Tweek feel the same hot thrill in his guts when Craig was so close to him? Did he feel the same warmth in his palm when they released each others fingers, and sometimes did he stand in the shower staring at the drain and imagining how it would feel to just ask ‘ _you want to be boyfriends_?’, or was he made of stone and anxieties and a million different things that meant he couldn’t understand what he was _doing_ to Craig. How badly he wanted him, and how terrified he was to actually have it.

It was funny, how it is only in the moments before attaining something Craig wanted his whole lifetime, he struggled to take it. It was tragic and infuriating and he crushed Tweek’s hand tight in his as they waited for the bus, his confusion as to where they could possibly be headed taking a secondary position in the rank of concerns he was holding at this time.

When the bus appeared on the horizon, Tweek seemed to let out a sigh of relief, and he pulled his hand from Craig’s in order to hunt through his pockets for the money that would hopefully cover their tickets.

“Will you tell me where we are going once we’re on the bus?” Craig asked, as the driver spotted them and began to slow, the quiet hum of the engine disturbing the early morning silence on the street.

“No. It’s a surprise.”

“Tweek if I tried to give you a surprise you would be shitting your pants right now so why should you be able to do this to me?”

Tweek gave him a sideways look that Craig could almost have mistaken for cockiness.

“It’s supposed to be romantic.”

He reached for Craig’s hand again as the bus came to kneel in front of them, and Craig’s heart felt like it was going to drop out of his chest. The bus doors hissed open on a tired looking driver, tidily zipped inside a neon safety vest.

“Morning boys.” He said. Tweek made the non-descript grunt of greeting he always made when strangers tried to make conversation with him, pulling Craig onto the vehicle and dumping his handful of change into the tray by the ticket machine.

“You two are up a little early aren’t you?”

“Big day planned. Can you give us our tickets?”

Tweek’s unease at being forced into conversation with someone he didn’t know sounded like rudeness, and the bus driver narrowed his eyes, entering the ticketing information and gesturing to Craig’s empty hot chocolate cup.

“No drinks allowed.”  
“It’s done.” He turned the cup upside down to prove it, but before he could hear the drivers response Tweek was tearing the tickets off the terminal and pulling him swiftly down the bus toward the back end.

“Holy Jesus.” His cheeks were the colour of ripe cherries. “Oh my god, why does everyone have to try and _talk_ to me?”

“He’s just being polite.” Craig informed him, following him into a seat far at the back and craning his neck to scope out any other passengers on their ride. There were none, and this was a blessing because Tweek, it would seem, had already had enough social excitement for one day. “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”

Tweek humphed tersely and sunk down low in his seat against the window. When the bus started shuddering under them, and then lurched to life down the road once more, Craig resigned himself to sitting back next to him and closing his eyes.

He may as well try and catch up on his sleep.

 

…

 

Craig almost couldn’t believe where they ended up.

Not just because he hadn’t even realised such a place existed in this city, but also because he couldn’t _believe_ how much consideration Tweek must have put in to his decision to bring him here. It certainly wasn’t the stock standard date spot, that was for sure, and yet it couldn’t have been a more excellent place for someone like Craig, who had always had a deep and unflinching fondness for the fuzzy and petable.

He didn’t even care that the two of them where the only people in the parking lot who didn’t have children with them. As soon as they had gotten off the bus across the road, Craig had felt like he was dreaming because this was the most like a movie his whole entire life had ever been. This was _incredible_.

“You brought me to a petting zoo?!”

The zoo had been a good hours bus ride away, and they had had to transfer once at the station which had, of course, worked Tweek into quite a dither. When they arrived the clock said nine twenty seven and the gates must have only just opened.

Tweek looked absolutely stricken, like he had done something terribly wrong and Craig had caught him in the act.

“… Why? Don’t you like it? Oh _fuck_ I knew I should have just gone with the mall again.”

“No! No you big stupid asshole. I just… I can’t believe…”

Words failed him.

Craig was never the best at processing strong emotions, and right now he was having a whole lot of them, all at the same time. He wanted to laugh, because it was ridiculous, objectively speaking, but he also wanted to cry because he had _never_ been so touched by someone else’s thoughtfulness in his life. He wanted to punch him, because how _dare_ he know Craig so well without trying, and he wanted to fall over and roll around on the ground like a little toddler because he was so embarrassed, and euphoric, and he couldn’t even find the words to express how surprised he was. And how humiliated he was because he could feel his face turning pink, and his heart staring to flutter, and it wasn’t _fair_ that this ungroomed jerk with perfect lips could make him feel this was so effortlessly. He almost didn’t even feel bad for the panicked way Tweek was twisting his hands together and trying to stumble an apology.

“I thought it was a good idea!” he gushed, “Seeing as you like… you know, hamsters and shit. I’m sorry! It was a stupid of me, I should have thought-“

“Tweek! Calm down! I’m not mad at you!” Craig had to grab a hold of his arm, because he could see passers by staring at them  as they debated, and they were still standing right next to the parking lot because Craig had stopped walking forward the moment he realised what they were doing. If they didn’t move soon, they were going to cause a parking dilemma - the spaces in the lot were filling up, and they could hardly be described as out of the way where they were right at this second in time.

“I’m not mad at you, I just can’t believe… I’m sorry, I’m just really surprised.”

Tweek blinked at him, and the corners of his lips were turned down tersely like he thought Craig was only saying that to avoid hurting his feelings.

“Really?”

“Really. I’m just… wow. Wowow I don’t know what to say. I just… ugh.” He had to rub his hand over his face to pull himself together.

“Were you planning this all week?” He asked finally, and Tweek chewed his bottom lip and avoided meeting Craig’s eye.

“Well yes. But not really. I was going to ask you if you wanted to come for your birthday, but when I couldn’t think of a date I just decided to advance it a little and make it a surprise.”

“What kind of animals do they have?”

“I don’t know. The usual I guess? There’s some rats, rabbits, lambs, probably an alpaca or whatever.”

“Are there guinea pigs?”

Tweek shrugged and stared at the ground by his feet.

“Probably. I’m really sorry though, if I fucked up. I just… I remember you used to have pets all the time in high school, and you watch a lot of cute animal videos on YouTube so I just kind of figured…”

Oh fuck it.

Fuck this beautiful man, and his beautiful heart, and everything about him which was radiant and kind and smart and observant even if sometimes, he could be a little too wrapped up in his delusions and anxieties to say the things he knew or thought out loud. Fuck his face, and his hands, and the way that when he was embarrassed he blushed like he was a rose blooming, a sun rising, or autumn leaves changing colour on the trees.

Craig didn’t care who was there, or who might have been looking.

He seized Tweek by the front of his jacket, and he kissed him, and when they parted he felt like everyone in the whole world knew they were boyfriends.

 

…

 

It was inevitable that the pair of them would stop off at a coffee shop on their way home.

Tweek bought him a coffee, even though he didn’t really want one, and the pair of them took a seat in a pair of armchairs by the window so Tweek could go through his pockets and pour over his change. The atmosphere was pleasant and busy – the clientele were mostly teenagers taking advantage of the free wi-fi, but close to the bathrooms sat mothers with children and couples making eyes across the table. Craig nursed his half-strength caramel late wondering wether or not he and Tweek might have looked like that to outsiders, like the couple on a date that they were, and declined a taste of Tweek’s quad shot Americano when it was offered to him, hiding his smile behind his cup lid when Tweek huffed and rolled his eyes.

“You’ll eat a chocolate bar you found on the ground, but you wont even give this a taste?”

Craig shrugged, and thought about telling him he was just jealous – the chocolate bar had been fucking delicious and Clyde had been in awe of his bravery for days.

“That was one time.”

“It was awful. You could have died.”

“You know caffeine can give you heart palpitations?”

Tweek shrugged, and gulped down half his coffee in one go. It was strange, how he could be so selectively worried about certain unlikely things, and so completely dismissive of other more probable ones. Craig didn’t mind it that much – in fact it was kind of attractive. Not as attractive when he set his cup down and gnawed his bottom lip though – it took Craig a moment to realise that Tweek was looking at him deep in thought.

“... Are you okay?” He asked, sitting up straighter and averting his eyes. Tweek hummed, and pulled his legs up into a cross beneath him. Most people didn’t sit on a coffee shop armchair with crossed legs, but apparently Tweek wasn’t one of them. Craig shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just thinking.”

“About?”

“Oh, you know. Just stuff. Stuff I’m afraid of and stuff I don’t like.”

“Alpacas?” Craig couldn’t help the little smile as he asked. Of all the animals at the petting zoo, the alpacas had been his least favourite ones. Too big, he said hurriedly, dragging Craig away. Too big, and too woolly, and too much neck. Wouldn’t Craig have a better time patting the bunnies?

Craig did, but that was beside the point. Tweek smiled reluctantly too, and sighed, rubbing his fingertips over his bruised under eyes as if that would ease the shadows out of them.

 “No. Not alpacas. _Other_ stuff. Did you have an okay time today?” He changed the subject sloppily, but Craig didn’t mind. He was awfully relaxed after their afternoon on a date together, and so he nodded.

“I did. It was really nice. I was surprised...”

Surprised, and still incredibly moved by the gesture. Although Craig didn’t think he could bring himself to admit that. Thinking about how much thought he put into it made Craig’s legs feel funny. It made him want to kiss him again, a few more times. It made him want to be closer than the table between them would allow, and wasn’t it strange, Craig thought, as he studied the gap and saw it was only three feet, how such a feeling could inspire such an intense and instinctual response.

“I was worried you wouldn’t like it.”

“It was great.”

“I am worried that I might do something to fuck this up.” He paused, and looked down to his coffee cup dejectedly. For the first time since the petting zoo, a stirring of unease arose in Craig – like he had been enjoying himself too hard today, without any consideration for the catch. And here it was. He frowned.

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, I dunno. I’m kinda making up this whole dating thing as I go along. I’ve never been that good with the concept of improvising, and I never planned to find myself in this situation so...”

“The situation where you end up dating someone?”

“Yeah,” He sighed, and Craig pulled back a little, wounded even though he knew this already, and he knew Tweek didn’t mean it in an unkind way. His company noticed, and immediately his cheeks turned bright red.

“Not that I don’t want to date you! I mean, I do, but that really wasn’t the end game. I’m just having trouble trying to adjust. I got a lot more than... well.”

Well, Craig had to admire his honestly. Although the time that had passed since the first revelation of this had not healed the hurt, he tried to out on his best brave face.

“Yeah... sex. I know. Although, tinder seems like a weird way to try and loose a V card?”

He sipped his coffee lightly, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Tweek stared at him for a moment, as though he didn’t understand what he had just said.

“V card?”

“Virginity.” Craig flushed, embarrassed to be called out on his choice of words like that. He had heard his sister refer to it once, when they were younger, and he couldn’t fathom why it was that singular, ridiculous term which returned to him now. Tweek still looked at him, uncomprehending.

“My virginity?”

Craig shrugged, and shifted his eyes. The atmosphere in between them seemed to thicken like custard in a saucepan, and he hoped the damn subject would hurry up and change. If it didn’t, he suspected it would raise any number of little insecurities, and he would end up lying awake all night, ruminating about how despite what Tweek said and did for him he had never really wanted it to play out this way.

“Craig, you seem to be under the impression I’ve never had sex before?”

Craig’s eyes snapped back up, fixing on the face of the boy opposite him as his brain tried to make sense of the words he just said.

“I what?”

“It _sounds_ like you’re implying that I’ve never had sex before,” A shallow furrow of confusion appeared between Tweek’s eyebrows. “Which is weird. Because I definitely have.”

Craig’s body felt like someone had laced his rib bones like a sneaker, and pulled them tight. He could feel all the colour draining out of his face, and his voice waiver just a note when he said

“You have?”

“Of course! Haven’t you?”

“ _No_!”

He couldn’t help it. His shock made him sound hurt. Really hurt. And Tweek looked mortified when he noticed that he had caused upset. Not even for the first time.

“Oh... Oh geeze. Really?”

“Yes!”

What kind of a stupid fucking question was that?! Why would Craig bother _lying_ about that kind of thing? As if anyone in his position would want to identify as a college virgin, who had barely even kissed boys let alone been naked in the same damn bed. It was almost laughable.

“Why do you look so shocked?! You know I _live_ with you, right? Have you ever once seen me bring someone home?”

This was a long winded way of implying that what Tweek was saying was impossible. There was absolutely no way he could have done this. Craig had definitely never noticed _him_ bring anyone home, and so he managed to convince himself that Tweek was lying.

He had to be lying.

He had to be.

Craig’s heart and his viscera felt like it had been turned to ice - frankly it was a miracle that the coffee in his hand was still warm at all. Every fragment of the affection he had ever felt for Tweek suddenly escaped him, in light of his _bare-faced lies,_ and even though he _looked_ like the same person Craig had sat down with, Craig felt as though he wasn’t actually the same person at all. This difference probably wasn’t external, so much as it was founded within his own eyes.  

Tweek shook his head in horrified bewilderment – he looked as though he had just blown the lid of a very unexpected and undesirable Pandora’s Box against his will.

“I thought you were going to other people’s places,” he said. “So I never asked. I just figured you were taking care of it.”

“I was.” Craig’s voice sounding echoing and unfamiliar in his ears. His heart was clenching, like it had forgotten how to beat. His legs felt funny. “I was giving myself carpel tunnel jerking off in the toilet.”

They lulled into a painfully awkward silence, Tweek highly tense and obviously uncomfortable. Everything around them was so bright, Craig wondered if he had just opened his eyes for the first time. It was a terrible, deeply upsetting experience. His hands were shaking as he set his coffee down.

“... Are you mad at me again?”

Tweek asked. Craig replied too fast for it to be believable.

“I’m not.”

“You look mad at me.”

“I’m telling you, I’m not.”

Tweek seemed unconvinced. Craig knew it was irrational, but he also knew he was mad. He was so _mad_.

He wasn’t even sure what he was mad about, because every time he tried to think he had an image of Tweek bending some strange man or women over his desk burned itself inside his brain. The thought that there could be any reality in it made him feel sick.

He had to be lying.

“I thought you said you never met someone on tinder.”

“I haven’t. The last time I had sex I was in high school. I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.”

He looked strained, his entire face burning red and his leg bouncing rapidly so it vibrated the low table between them.

“Like what?”

“Like I hurt your feelings? If I have, I’m sorry for that, but I _told_ you what I wanted when I signed up for that stupid app. You knew before I even asked you out what I’d wanted. And I don’t think I should have to apologise for my history or my original intentions.”

“You’re right.”

But despite knowing all of this, Craig still didn’t feel okay.

 

 

...

 

 

Tweek was right.

He shouldn’t have to apologise for his sex life before now. But in the aftermath of this coffee-shop revelation Craig felt self-conscious being alone with him all the same.

The days that followed were awkward because of this, and Craig wasn’t sure if the awkwardness was greater for him or for Tweek, who was edging very carefully around him out of the concern that he had unintentionally made Craig upset. Craig, while being precisely as upset as Tweek thought he was, also knew that this kind of feeling was irrational. This only made him even _more_ upset. His feelings were conflicted at the best of times, and at the worst of times he found himself thinking that the whole situation was so FUBAR he wanted to undo it all and go back to just being friends again. He remembered those moments, those fleeting and wonderful seconds he had thought to himself that he was _special_ to Tweek. That He was unique, and valuable, and Tweek belonged to him, and he felt so stupid. The fact he could ever have believed such a thing was humiliating and shameful and so naïve...

All those times Craig had thought Tweek was innocent. All those times he had touched himself, and thought about being Tweek’s first time made him feel like a dirty little child next to the real man. Craig’s own fantasies seemed like embarrassments by comparison, and he thought he could never, ever tell him. Tweek would definitely laugh. Who wouldn’t laugh at a nineteen year old virgin who had never so much as _kissed_ someone he likes? Someone who got flustered at the thought of intercourse which involved himself because honestly, he had never really thought about it that realistically before.

It had always seemed so distant and improbable – a problem for an older, wiser Craig. But here and now, it seemed as though older wiser Craig was still a long way away. Young and stupid Craig would just have to go it alone from here. It was a lot harder than it should have been, knowing that Tweek was already ahead of him, and the discovery came as he was still coming to terms with the fact that in terms of Tweek’s romantic life, Craig had been no more than an _accident_. He tried his best to not let it get to him, but he just couldn’t help it.

Particularly in the evenings, when the two of them were in the room alone.

Craig was lying on his bed making flash cards, when Tweek exited the bathroom wearing a tank and a pair of boxer briefs. His hair was fluffy from the humidity in the bathroom, his arms and face flushed and scrubbed clean of any dirt and oil. Craig looks up from his work to watch him pass, eyes lingering on the long firm muscles in his upper thighs, and leg hairs which seemed unusually dark against his skin. Craig wondered, fleetingly, what his thighs felt like – if the fine blond hairs would tickle his inner legs – and then he had to slam his notebook shut and drop his face into his bed to drown out his groan.

“... Okay?”

Tweek seemed alarmed. Craig lifted his face and looked at him again, and he tried to sound genuine when he said ‘Fucking _finals_ ’ but Tweek didn’t look like he believed him. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he took a seat at his desk chair, and groped around amongst books and paper coffee cups on his desk for Nicorette gum.

“Are three weeks away?”

Craig thought that was rich. He distinctly remembered having a very similar conversation to this before.

“Exactly,” he replied, matter of fact. “No time at all.”

Tweek’s eyes flutter, but he didn’t respond. The desk chair creaked as he spun around and set about booting his computer. Craig stared at the back of his neck for a minute, and at the shape of his back muscles beneath his tank. He felt his heart fluttering like a caged bird, as he remembered that since the coffee shop, the pair of them hadn’t so much as held hands. Craig was starting to ache for his kisses again. And for the shy, easy giggles they shared watching films. He missed coming home and having Tweek beckon him closer shyly, and edging around flirting as though neither really knew what they were doing about this. They didn’t have a label- they were just enjoying it while it lasted.

But on the other hand, every time Craig remembered the weight and warmth of Tweek’s lips, or the way his thumb rubbed over Craig’s knuckle when they held hands, he felt cheated on. Betrayed in a way he hadn’t really been, because he had always though that Tweek was _his_ man. His companion. But Tweek had never been his all along.

He sighed, and rubbed his hand against his forehead tiredly.

“Tweek.”

He suddenly found himself feeling very embarrassed to have said his name out loud. He tried to change this into something other than a direct address.

“Tweeky. Tweekers... Tea?” he feigned his best thoughtful expression, and clearly displeased by most of these terms of ‘endearment’ Tweek turned his chair around and looked at him distastefully.

“Are you talking to me?”

“I’m trying to come up with a cute name for you or something.”

“Oh.” This makes him flush a little, and Craig is relieved he has distracted him at least a bit. “Okay. Well, Tweek is fine.”

“Its not very cute though” he mused, and Tweek arched his eyebrows. “Didn’t your parents ever call you anything cute when you were a child?”

“Uh, no? What about you? You seem to be forgetting your name is Craig.”

“Craig is shitty too. From now on you call me Craig-o. Craigy? C-note, daddy c, Craig diggity, Craigidy Craig in da house...”

“Craig,” Tweek cut him off. He didn’t seem very impressed. “Shut up.”

Craig gaped at him long enough for him to start to feel obviously guilty. Frustrated, he folded his arms across his chest and sighed.

“Why are you being like this?” Tweek asked him, and it took Craig a moment to figure out he was talking to him despite there only being the two of them in the room.

“Like this? Like what? What am I being like?”

Tweek waved his hands in a frustrated kind of way, and Craig watched him struggle o pull the words to his mouth.

“I don’t know! You’re acting really weirdly! When you aren’t talking you’re acting all sulky. When you are talking your talking complete _garbage_ and it’s completely obvious that your intentions are fake. You’ve been behaving like an asshole since Saturday, and I wish you would just hurry up and admit you’re shitty at me about something so we can fight and get the whole thing over with.” He banged his fist down on his knee for emphasis, and Craig scowled.

“I was just trying to think of a name.”

“Craig, you know my name.”

“Yves?”

Tweek picked a copy of _angels and demons_ up off his desk and threw it at him. Hard.

“Hey! Ow!” Craig picked the book up and sat upright, curling his fingers around the spine so hard that his knuckles turned white and bloodless. “Fucking asshole!”

“I’m the asshole?” Tweek looked furious, but also like he might have been on the verge of laughing straight in his face. “Jesus Christ Craig. _I’m_ the asshole? Jesus Christ...”

He shook his head, and Craig’s sense of being a child next to him, an unlearned lesser being, returned.

“Whatever you say.”

When he turned away again, and started typing on his newly booted PC, Craig could have leapt off the bed and clouted him. Furious tears prickled the back of his eyes. He tossed the book aside, and asked him.

“What do you get strangers to call you when you fuck them?”

Tweek froze, his fingers hovering over his keyboard in suspended silence, and the far away sounds of life elsewhere in the dorm building became overwhelming. The tension in the room could have been cut with a knife.

“Is that what’s bothering you?” Tweek asked him coldly, although his voice did crack with a note of panic at the end. “I’ve already said I’m sorry for your feelings. But believe it or not, I wasn’t actually _thinking_ of you when I started having sex.”

“I know that.”

“Then why are you still so angry at me?!”

He spun his chair around again, forcibly, and this time when he looked at Craig all evidence of irritation was gone. Only hurt was written on his face, and Craig’s heart twinged but his hurt and embarrassment didn’t lessen.

“I don’t know.” He lied. “I’m not angry.”

“Yes you are! What else could you possibly want to hear from me now? That I’m a virgin, and I lied?”

Craig shook his head, avoiding looking at him, and after waiting a second or two for his answer and receiving nothing, Tweek heaved a massive sigh.

“I like you Craig.” He said quietly. “I really do. Aren’t you supposed to like me too?”

Craig felt something inside him breaking. He shrugged, and looked down at his hands, and the pair of them lulled into silence as Craig mulled it over, trying to process his emotions and ignoring the way he could feel Tweek watching him with weary green eyes.

He was right again. He was _always_ right. Craig hadn’t been able to think or talk properly around him for days. Craig wished, fleetingly, that there was something he could request to make it alright, but some part of him said this was not to be. He wondered if perhaps he was just worried because of misconceptions. If perhaps his hurt was founded in distorted understanding of how Tweek’s sex life before now went down. After a minute or two of silence, he heard himself asking.

“How many people have you fucked?”

And Tweek hesitated, as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to share the answer.

“About nine.”

The number was a blow to the stomach. Craig sucked a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“Guys?” he asked quietly, “Or women?”

“Both. Mostly women. But I prefer guys.”

“How come?”

It was Tweek’s turn to shrug. Craig looked to him, and tried to find something he recognised in those pretty green eyes.

“I dunno. I just do. It’s a comfort thing I guess. Guys are familiar, girls aren’t. But Like I said, I haven’t slept with anyone since college started. You know how bad things went with tinder... I just haven’t been able to work out _how_.”

“Well,” Craig thought that sounded kind of stupid. “How did you go about it before?”

Tweek flushed at this, and Craig got the sinking in his stomach that said he would probably regret asking.

“It was easy. Usually I just went with friends from drama club to parties. People just came up to me. It was terrifying at first, but I was sixteen and I was horny, and I never had a hard time because... I dunno.” He shrugged in a way that said he did know. He just didn’t want to admit it.

“Because you’re attractive.” Craig aided him, and looking appropriately sheepish Tweek nodded.

“Uh huh.”

“Well were you ever in a serious relationship?”

Tweek laughed at this. A short, humourless laugh. He shook his head.

“Of course not. Who in the world could possibly ever like me? Looking decent is one thing, but I’m not stupid enough to think that spending a lot of time with me is easy. I worry too much, and I smoke a lot, and then if worry about how much I’m smoking so I take a whole lot of drugs. People don’t _like_ that kind of behaviour Craig.”

But Craig, despite knowing how stupid it sounded, disagreed.

“I like you,” he informed him, and he thought that as he said it Tweek would know what he was thinking now: why did you fuck them when you could have fucked me all along. “I’ve always liked you. I told you that.”

“Uh huh.”

They lull into silence, confession making the atmosphere heavy and despondent. Craig wished that hearing him say all this would make him feel better, but as he sat there thinking about his emotions he thought he did not. He still felt the same as he did before. Childish and naïve and wrong. As he reflected, he felt tears breaking and spilling onto his cheeks. Embarrassed that Tweek would see him crying, he sniffed and tried to wipe them away.

“I just wish that you had have told me...”

Even as he said it though, Craig wasn’t sure if that was true. If Tweek had told him in high school he was fucking people, Craig’s heart may have found itself clove in two. Perhaps it would have changed their relationship forever. Perhaps it would have made it so Tweek would never be attractive to Craig again. He mulled over the possibilities while Tweek thought on that, and was unsurprised to hear the perceptive response.

“You’re just saying that.”

The desk chair rattled as he stood off it, and Craig shuffled over to make room for him cross legged on the bed. Despite the anger, and the pain, there was still something deeply comforting about having him so close to him. It removed Craig from the isolation of his regrets and humiliations, and reminded him that Tweek was still a real mind behind the face.

“You know Craig, I never even knew the names of the people I slept with. I didn’t ask or remember because I was scared that if I did, I’d end up getting all fucked up about it. And now when I’m alone, and you’re in class or asleep or whatever, I have to jerk of in the shower by myself and think about how shy I am, and how fucked up, and how if it wasn’t for you sticking around me I’d probably have no one to say hi to me when I get home after a shitty day.” He hooked a lock of hair behind his ear, and looked at the Dan Brown novel lying on the floor sadly. “Fucking those people was good in small moments. And trying to use tinder was an effort for me to repeat those small moments because honestly that’s all I thought I could ever hope for. But being around you, and knowing that you like me... it’s really something else for me. And it’s really strange. But even though I’m confused about this, it doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it. To be honest I prefer it way more. Having a stranger say you’re attractive, and having someone you actually care about tell you you’re a good person are completely different things, and even the best sex in the world can’t replace it.”

Craig took a moment to think about this, but decided that not having ever been on the receiving end of either, he wouldn’t know.

“Okay. But the difference between you saying that and me believing it is-“

“You just have to trust me.” Tweek turned his face toward him, his eyes locked on to Craig’s with a strange intensity that made Craig feel good, in the giddy, fearful way he felt good when the lights dropped in a cinema before the show. “I trust you. I believe you aren’t just fucking with me about this.”

“Do you?”

Craig didn’t know why it was so touching, to hear him say this. In a rush, he suddenly thought of the times he had wanted to lace their fingers. The times he had touched himself and moaned for him in the dark. He felt his cheeks flush, and he has to look away in case Tweek sees it, and judges him. Because these secret thoughts and private moments were embarrassing. They were childish and immature. Especially now he knew... the things Tweek had done.

His company ( _boyfriend_ ) nodded solemnly, and flashes of images passed through Craig’s head. Tweek kissing people. Tweek burying his face between someone else’s legs. Jealousy and shame swelled in him like a tidal wave, threatening to break over him and drag him down. He took a deep breath, and tried to focus on his smell instead. The warmth of his body in close proximity, and other comforting things.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “Okay. I may need a bit of time to process this.”

Tweek pushed hair off his face and smiled a sad, but kindly sort of smile.

“Okay. If there’s anything else you want to know, just ask me.”

Craig thought this sounded okay.

 

...

 

Craig stood in the library looking at the numbers on book spines, counting through the 500’s to arrive where he wanted but somehow forgetting what he was looking for each time he asked himself what he was doing there. The late afternoon sunlight shone through long windows, illuminating dust motes and making the silence feel transparent and electric, like the breathlessness which fills the air before a strike of lightning. As Craig wandered down the aisles, he took in words which conjured images which floated at the back of his mind with other thoughts. Preoccupations which had dogged him since he rose that morning, and piloted his tired body into school.

Tweek looked good this morning when he left the dorm. He wore flannel because it was cold and a hat to keep his hair out of the way. Craig lay in bed and watched him pack his bag, fumbling pills and cigarettes and a box of matches, and then remembering he had to take his textbook as well. The dorm was hot, their heating unit was of that particularly enthusiastic kind which spewed hot air and condensation into the air in equal measure. Tweek applied deodorant, dropping the roller into his dirty laundry basket and lifting the corner of the curtain to peer outside and see if it was still raining.

It was.

“Do you have class today?” he asked, forcing his voice to sound bright and failing. Craig rolled onto his side to check the clock. It was seven fourteen am.

“No.” He lied.

And that was the end of that. Cray lay in bed for hours after thinking, and at mid-afternoon he stood in the library, not an inch closer to figuring out what to do and cracking open a book about Copernicus as though he might find the answer on page three hundred and twelve. Instead, he found a diagram of several celestial spheres. It was stupid, but for a moment he wondered, if Tweek was the sun, would Craig even be in his orbit? Or were those places reserved for the bodies he had stuck his cock in in the past?

He shook himself, and replaced the book on the shelf. What a stupid thing to occur to him. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and shuffled further down the aisle.

It wasn’t long before he came up to the end of the shelves, and spotted the table he and Tweek had been sitting at only two and a bit weeks ago, when they had matched. His eyes lingered there as he rounded the corner into the next book row, but just before the table disappeared from view he hesitated. The silence here was complete, the only echo of the real world was the distant muffled sound of traffic, far away.

He glanced left, then right, and saw he was completely alone. He doubled back, and made a beeline for the table, dumping his backpack on it and sitting down in one of the sleek, designer chairs. As he did, he felt a wave of vertigo pass over him, and he remembered he hadn’t eaten any breakfast.

Goddamn it.

He put his elbows on the table and cradled his forehead in his hands. He closed his eyes.

It was just as he was starting to loose himself into the silent darkness behind his eyelids, that he felt his hone vibrate in his bag.

With a groan, he opened his eyes again and jerked open his bag zip When he flipped over the case and unlocked it, he saw he had received two texts – one from his dorm mate and one from his mom. He opened the message from Tweek, and gave the contents a scan.

_Can you check if i left my room keys on my desk if youre still @ home??_

For some reason, this made Craig incredibly angry.

How could he be so _calm_ about this?! How could he just message him like there was nothing happening right now, and go about living his life despite being well aware of how Craig was struggling to organise all this in his mind.

He was so frustrated, and incredibly confused. By Tweek, by life, by how Tweek could have lost his keys when Craig saw him pick them up and put them in his satchel this morning. The more he thought about how jumbled everything was, the more he thought about how he seemed to be the only one in the history of the world who had ever felt this way, the more he thought that everything which was happening was all his fault. Maybe it was _him_ who was the crazy one. The one who was messed up and wrong. Was he being immature about this? He knew, even as he asked himself, that he was.

Sex was _normal_. Sex was something people do. He shouldn’t be afraid of it, because it was as regular and unavoidable as bathing or eating or using the bathroom. At least, that was what had been implied to him, in that sort of round about cultural way that also told him sex was something that he should be ashamed of. Something that should be done behind closed doors, and not discussed, unless he was talking to Token about how many girls he slept with last summer.

He tried to remember an instance in his life where someone had sat down with him and said ‘Craig. One day you will wonder if you are in love with someone, and that’s okay. And maybe that someone had already made love with someone else – that’s also okay’, but unsurprisingly Craig found there wasn’t one and so, even though Craig knew it _should_ be okay, he really had to concentrate on making himself believe it. God knew that if he had willingly blinded himself to the person Tweek really was for so long, he could blind himself to the way he felt when he saw who he really was as well.

And maybe when he saw the real world, as well.

Craig was having a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that everything he saw, and everything that seemed real through his eyes, was distorted – distorted by his stubborn refusal to see anything that wasn’t related to him. Distorted by a romantic, recklessly unrealistic image of a boy with long blond hair and a shy smile, which said this boy was the sun of Craig’s heliocentric world. He told himself he should have never let himself fall for that – the problem with trying to get to close to the sun was the fact the sun burns, and only as Craig sat in the library talking himself through the mess in his head did he come to know that these sore blisters on his heart were really his own damn doing. He couldn’t blame Tweek. It wasn’t his fault.

Tweek had never been his. Craig had lied to himself, become accustomed to the idea, but he knew now as he watched the dust floating on glowing gold streams of light that Tweek had _never_ been his.

Craig didn’t own him. He didn’t control his thoughts, or wants, or needs. Craig couldn’t even control his own, even though he tried.

Perhaps, Craig needed to shock himself back into reality. He needed to break the spell of distanced fantasy, and force himself back down to planet earth with Tweek, the real boy, whose pretty face hid a mind and a heart just as complex and fragile as Craig’s own. Perhaps, if he couldn’t reason his way into acceptance, he could force himself into it.

He realised, as the volume of the distant city around him dropped to static, and the slats of sunlight pouring through the library windows inched over the tabletops, that he needed to have sex with Tweek.

 

...

 

Craig showered more thoroughly than he ever had in his entire life, and meticulously rehearsed the plan over and over in his head. The thoughts kept getting jumbled, and he had to bullet point each one on the steam on the mirror when he got out.

_Step one: kiss the boy  
Step two: Have sex_

He suspected plan sounded a lot more straight forward in theory than it would prove to be in practice. Frustrated, he wiped off the mirror and made sure to dry even the spaces between his toes.

He felt so clean he might have sparkled when he finally came out of the bedroom, and his hands shook just a fraction as he hung his towel carefully over the back of his desk chair.

“Did you send me those photos?” he asked Tweek, who was sitting cross legged and hunched over his laptop, cigarette smoking on the edge of the ashtray by his elbow. Craig eyed the cigarette suspiciously, and hoped it was only tobacco inside it. He didn’t much fancy the idea of trying to get laid with a guy who was utterly and unapologetically stoned.

“Yeah. I think so.” He looked up, eyes clear, and Craig was satisfied that it was only a cigarette, smoking idly, and he had time to be irritated that Tweek had still not made sufficient effort to quit before he remembered what he had been intending to ask him.

“Did you do it on Facebook or email?”

“Facebook.”

Tweek had taken many photographs of their zoo trip a week ago. Craig had been afforded the privilege of handling one of the Texel guineapigs they kept and he had been insistent there be photographs to prove it. He had been too stressed and upset to request Tweek send them earlier, but he had been able to ask him to do so that morning.

“Good.” He dropped down on the end of Tweek’s bed, intending to change his profile picture later that night, and thought about the response he may receive from his unsuspecting roomie if he tossed off his t-shirt right now in front of him. Would it be better to do it in his bed, or Tweek’s? Fuck, did Craig even have any condoms? He remembered buying a package _ages_ ago when he first came to college, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember where he had put them.

“… Whatcha looking at?” he asked after a while. Listening to Tweek scrolling away without so much as a glance in his direction was a little unsettling.

“Semiotics” Tweek replied, a little too quickly to not be suspicious.

“Homework?” Craig asked, disbelieving and a little jilted. “On a weekend?”

“Just until you got out of the shower.”

He exited out of the web browser suddenly, and pushed his laptop closed. Craig jumped when he spun around in his seat.

‘Can I shower now?” he asked. And it was the perfect opportunity for Craig to say ‘No, fuck me first’, but words failed him and instead he opened his mouth and said

“Uh, yup.”

Tweek gave him a strange look, as though he knew something was awry, but didn’t comment.

And Craig was left to wait another forty minutes, taking himself up, listening first to the shower and then to the hairdryer and then to the sounds of Tweek brushing his teeth through the wall. Craig tried to make himself comfortable against Tweek’s pillows, but for some reason he just could not. When his roommate returned to the room and tossed his towel into the laundry basket, Craig was lying on his belly with his face in the mattress, his heart running rings around his chest like it was a raceway.

“Uh, dude?”

“Mmph.”

“Can I get in my bed?”

Craig rolled onto his back and sighed.

“I guess.”

It seemed he had ran into his first problem with the plan. A problem similar to the problems he had had with the idea of using dating apps in the first place.

Craig didn’t know how to ask for romantic or sexual favours. He didn’t even know how to talk about them. Sure, he could make passing comments and jokes about fucking or whatever – he had been doing so all his life!- but when it came to actually facing the reality of the acts, Craig just didn’t know what to say. He wished there was some magical formula, which he could have written on the bathroom mirror to make it happen, but there wasn’t. And he felt a little as though if he were to just plain ask for it, Tweek might be a little bit suspicious. Tweek was naturally the suspicious kind.

“Did you put out your smoke?” Craig asked him instead, as he dropped down onto the bed beside him. Tweek said yes, he had actually finished the entire cigarette while Craig hadn’t been looking, and subsequently washed the butt down the shower plug hole.

“Dude, don’t smoke in the shower. That’s filthy.”

Tweek assured him he hadn’t been smoking _in_ the shower. Just on the way to the shower.

Craig decided not to scare him, by mentioning the fact that if their shower drain clogged, and the plumber found a butt in the pipes, the pair of them would probably be evicted.

Tweek sucked a deep breath in through his nose and Craig could almost hear his brain working, trying to calculate what to do or say next that wouldn’t make this awkward.

“You’re still in my way.” He pointed out after a while. Craig sighed and propped himself up on his elbows.

“Thanks for talking to me about... stuff yesterday,” he said honestly, but still it was hard to make it sound genuine. He struggled to convey enough sincerity in his words, and he had had that issue for what felt like his entire life. “Even though there have been moments that upset me, I’ve kind of enjoyed getting to know you better. And…” he chewed the inside of his cheek, trying to gauge his roommate’s reaction before he pressed on. Tweek looked tentative, but receptive to what he was saying. Like he _wanted_ to trust Craig, and believe what was coming out his mouth, but still was not entirely sure that he should.

“And?”

“… And I guess I am glad we matched. Cause I never would’ve gotten to get to know you, the _actual_ you, otherwise.”

Tweek’s face broke into a shy smile, and he pushed his hair back off his face in a manner that sent wobbles down Craig’s spine.

“We’ve known each other since we were nine,” he said.

“You know what I mean. That whole weird idea of you I had... it was weird.”

Craig wondered if he was blushing, and if he was, was it visible in the warm dorm room light.

He looked down toward his feet, and wondered how much longer he could sit there before Tweek shoved him off and climbed in under his duvet. Would it be long enough to raise the question? For some reason, his ability to estimate the trajectory of possible conversations was not functioning, and it was strange – before this moment he hadn’t even realised he had one. Would Tweek take offence if he tried to proposition him? Would he misunderstand? Say something completely confusing? Maybe it would come out of Craig’s mouth wrong instead. He had no way to predict what may happen if he asked, and maybe that meant he should be quiet until he could make a better guess?

There were certain parts of him, however, which didn’t want to wait. Not when he could smell Tweek’s soap, and see the light shining on his hair like a halo, and they had been so close the whole day, living in a small room so Craig’s chest ached with how much he adored him. How crazy he was about this boy, and how he was trapped by his inability to say or do anything about it.

Unconsciously, he started biting at the bed of his thumbnail, considering the likelihood of Tweek going to sleep early so he could retreat back to the bathroom to jerk off. That was the safest way to do it. It was failsafe, and was significantly less likely to offend anybody. Perhaps he should just stick to that, and wait until Tweek made some spine tingling gesture of affection or kindness towards him that inspired him to try again.

He was just about to get up off the bed when Tweek coughed discretely and shuffled closer.

“It was weird, but I think I had wrong ideas about you too, so we are even. I’m also enjoying getting to know you. I uh… I dunno. I was worried it wouldn’t work out, but we are still talking right now so that’s cool.”

“It’s working out great. Sex-talks notwithstanding. I’m still overwhelmed about the petting zoo thing.” Craig turned his face up and startling himself when he realised how close Tweek’s face was to his. “No one has ever put that much thought into anything for me before.”

“Really?” the corner of Tweek’s mouth quirked, and for a fleeting, electrifying moment, Craig thought he saw green eyes flicker to his lips and linger there, just long enough to form an idea. An inclination. A desire.

“Uh huh.”

“You’re hard to please,” Tweek’s voice was lower now, and quieter. Just loud enough to pass between the two of them and raise goose pimples on the back of Craig’s arms. “Sometimes I wonder if you even like _anything_.”

“I like you,” it came out before he could help it. “Really, I do.”

And this was very fortunate, because if he didn’t him probably would have been _furious_ when Tweek closed the gap, moved his hand to cradle the back of Craig’s neck, and kissed him.

It was a relief, tasting his mouth again. Every time they were separated, Craig thought he remembered the taste and his knees became weak, but when it was really _happening_ he felt deep down to his bones that nothing he could memorise would ever capture the _depth_ of it. The intensity and the tiny movements of breath that made it more real than anything he had ever experienced before. Dizzy and pulsing with the urge for more, Craig leant back and pulled Tweek with him, spreading his thighs enough to fit the other boy’s body hard between them. For the first time, there was no distance imposed – no resistance on the part of nervous Tweek, or shyness about the reality of the situation they found themselves in. Tweek’s hands didn’t shake as they gripped Craig’s waist for leverage – he pulled his mouth along Craig’s neck and rolled his hips down, waiting for the short, blissful inhalation that assured him this was okay.

“Do you want me to fuck you?” he breathed, the wet stripe his tongue had laid down still tingling on the shell of Craig’s ear. Craig whined something indistinct, a jumble of words of agreement and encouragement, and fumbled his hands up underneath the fabric of Tweek’s shirt. The skin on the small of his back was warm and soft, still slightly wet where he had missed drying off, and when Craig let his nails gouge shallow lines over there Tweek shuddered, arms wiggling free and up so he could push himself into a kneeling position over him.

“I’m weirdly nervous, so if I mess up I’m sorry,” he pushed his hair away again, the threads of blonde slipping back into his face almost the moment after he had done it. Craig thought hazily that that didn’t matter one bit – when he looked that good, nothing mattered. Particularly when Craig assured him they would figure it out together as best they could, and visibly relieved he tugged his shirt up over his head to reveal the pale planes of flesh and muscle Craig had seen whole only in his fantasies. The broadness of his shoulders, and the slim line of his waist, and all the little scars and marks from chickenpox. Playground fights. A surgery.

“… What happened?” Craig asked, daring to reach forward and touch the spot where the pale, finely healed gash lay flush against his hipbone.

“Appendectomy.” Tweek bat his hand away dismissively, shuffling closer so his thighs slid right up under the backs of Craig’s legs. “In sophomore year.”

“Oh…”

Craig wouldn’t ever admit he found that sexy. Such a little, insignificant thing. He never would have noticed it from afar. He tried letting his hand gravitate back to Tweek’s navel, and the waistband of his sweatpants, and he felt almost like he was dreaming when the only response he got when he started inching the elastic down was a shaky intake of breath, and an arm moving over him to brace against the headboard.

“Are you hard?” Craig couldn’t see his dick outlined in the crotch – the fabric had bunched up from kneeling and obscured all of the beautiful contours Craig had taken delight in in the past. Tweek’s lips pressed together nervously, and he nodded.

“Are you?”

Craig was so hard it was a miracle he wasn’t soaking the duvet with his precome. He didn’t bother to answer, taking a moment to remember that this was the last moment of his life before he saw Tweek’s dick. The dick he had spent forever dreaming of. The dick he had imagined inside him no less than a hundred times since last Tuesday.

And it would be hard.

Suddenly he wasn’t convinced he could do it. He had never actually seen another hard dick before. What if seeing it ruined everything? What if it wasn’t what he expected? Fear passed through him, and he faltered, and Tweek’s eyes fluttered in as if he was bothered but he didn’t sound annoyed when he spoke all the same.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He assured him. “Please tell me if you don’t want to do this.”

“I want to.” Craig told him, even though he didn’t sound so sure. “I want to.”

But even as he said it, a fear welled in his chest. He remembered Tweek sitting in his bed the other day. The uncomplicated way in which he said he felt anything for the people he fucked in the past. Craig’s guts lurched at the thought that someday, he too could be one of them too.

A forgotten tryst. An honest complaint.

 _He wasn’t good_ , he heard him saying, to someone else on some other day. _I didn’t like it. I thing, no matter how hard he tried,, Craig was only ever a friend._

Craig didn’t want to be a bad fuck. Or only a friend. What if he did this, and Tweek decided he didn’t want him anymore?

He wasn’t prepared for that. Craig wasn’t prepared to lose him so soon, after waiting so long, and suffering so much, to be close to him.

His breath caught in his throat, and as Tweek’s lips skated down his throat Craig heard himself gasping _“Fuck!_ No! Okay, stop!”

And clearly puzzled, Tweek sat up. He took one look at Craig’s stricken face and turned pale.

“... Are you okay?”

Craig shook his head, unable to make words. His whole body was rigid. Petrified. Tweek swallowed uncomfortably and lay down next to him in silence.

“.. Okay,” he murmured after a while, reaching a shaking hand to touch the side of Craig’s cheek in reassurance. “That’s fine. That’s cool. Okay.”

The sound of his voice wasn’t reassuring. Craig had to turn away in frustration, distancing himself from the hard cock pressing still against his leg. It _wasn’t_ okay, and it didn’t matter where he looked - he couldn’t find the strength inside to say why.

And he couldn’t find the part of himself which would make him follow through.

It brought shameful tears to the rims of his eyes, and the night seemed to drag on forever in silence.


	5. ITS JUST ONE FUCKIN ISSUE AFTER THE OTHER WITH THESE TWO!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A FORMAL APOLOGY TO THE READERS.  
> I finished this chapter about four months ago. I just took a million years to post because between then and now, i majorly re-wrote a lot of the preceeding story to make it flow better. And... i decided to add a sixth chapter as well. OTL   
> Thank you and apologies to those patient individuals who have been dying for the concluusion to this fic – although at the risk of irritating everyone i must suggest readers go back and skim the earlier chapters in order to understand the alterations (retcons) ive made, which will affect this chapter as a whole. 
> 
> TL;DR: Changed chapter four so tweek is no longer a sex n00b. made some minor adjustments too other chapters to improve plot. did all of this because of reasons.

Afternoon classes were always the worst. Particularly on a Friday close to a long weekend break, and the only thing Craig could really focus on was how bad he was at behaving like an actual human being living their life.

Shouldn’t this be something that came naturally? Shouldn’t it all play out like an instinct thing? Craig had tried to approach it from every angle, yet every time he came up at a loss because even though he thought he _wanted_ to get Tweek to fuck him, he wasn’t able to envision himself doing it. Maybe he was trying to hard to picture it? Maybe he was thinking too hard about the process through which it was best to make it work?

Craig fiddled with the rear of his cellphone, making patterns with fingerprints on the shiny metal back. He had been so puzzled and fretful that morning that he had even outsourced his analysis to Clyde and Token, and while Token had not been forthcoming with his opinions Clyde was ever a fountain of potentially helpful advice. Of course, this came mixed in with a healthy helping of utterly _unhelpful_ advice. The difficulty was involved in trying to figure out which was which.

His phone vibrated, and Craig flipped it over, unlocking the screen and reading the message Clyde had sent. Unconsciously, he began tapping his pen against the edge of the desk, and a few rows down a pair of girls turned around in their seats to glare at him.

He didn’t notice. Unintentionally interrupting the education of others was not something Craig concerned himself about.

_If you want to fuck man you just gotta ask her. She probably wants it as bad as you._

Ugh. Clyde just couldn’t understand that the reciprocity of the feeling wasn’t the issue.

_You are missing the point._

Craig had had enough of repeating himself over and over so his friend might even halfway understand him. He sent the text and returned his phone to its face down orientation on the desk.

This was so beautifully typical of Clyde. Come to think of it, it was kind of typical of everyone. Everyone who wasn’t Craig Tucker, with his boring face and boring life and embarrassing inability to figure stuff out as he went along. Token and Clyde have been having sex and relationships with people since they were sixteen. Apparently, Tweek had too. Craig, meanwhile, had been masturbating alone daily since he was a lot younger, taking for granted that one day he would fall into sleeping with someone some way or another, and that there wouldn’t be any difficulties or significant effort on his part necessary. Ideas like this, which centred on the potential of a future day, created a sense of security that Craig was only just now learning to be false. Did that mean that everything he believed when he was younger was also wrong? That when it all finally happened, he _wouldn’t_ be comfortable and older and in love? He wasn’t even sure if he knew what it meant to love a person any more, and every time he closed his eyes he thought he heard Tweek telling him.

_I like you. You need to trust me._

But Craig wasn’t sure he trusted anything anymore. Particularly cruel, emotionally jarring reality. Fortune had been generous enough to deliver him Tweek – something he never would have expected in a million years of life – but it still denied him the love drunk romance the had always thought he would have no trouble receiving and left him feeling awkward and uncomfortable instead. He had been so _embarrassed_ that he needed to turn to a dating app to find a boyfriend. And now he was past that terrible incident he was embarrassed about something even worse.

He just wanted to make this right. He just wanted to go back to the way things used to be. He just wanted the current situation to _change_.

And Clyde didn’t understand. Because it had been simple for him to get along in life, when he hit puberty and suddenly features which had been homely in childhood became handsome and interesting, and the short line of girls willing to accept what he offered them began to grow longer and longer with each passing day. For Token, it had been even easier, and so it was almost impossible for Craig to reconcile his current position with the experiences of his other friend. He groaned miserably when his phone vibrated, and almost didn’t check it to see what it said.

_dude, you are thinking too hard about this whole thing. Learn how to enjoy yourself for once in your life._

Craig didn’t think that would be happening. If he stopped thinking about it, he might get distracted from his goal, and God knew that wasn’t an option at this late a stage in the game.

He decided that it wasn’t worth replying to the message, and much to the ire of his classmates he went back to tapping his pen.

 

…

 

A soft drizzle was falling when he finished submitting his final project, and although most of Craig’s most treasured memories were under comforting grey skies and glittering city lights he didn’t really feel much love for the weather as he made his way home. The wetness sunk into his hoodie, sticking his t-shirt against his back, and the water that dribbled down the point of his nose didn’t feel cleansing or refreshing at all. When he returned to the dorm, darkness was beginning to encroach over the city, and the only soul visible across the entire horizon was a long, hunched figure sitting and smoking a cigarette ( _joint_ ) on the dormitory steps.

Craig’s heart sunk to his doc martins when he saw him, and bowed his head on the off chance Tweek would be too high to recognise his face.

But he was out of luck.

The second Tweek spotted him, he stood up, fumbling to grab onto the handrail to ensure he didn’t lose his balance and slip onto the footpath below. His attempts to toe out the joint on the step did not make it so Craig didn’t know he had been smoking it, and he could smell the lingering odour of it on the wetness in the air.

Tweek didn’t look too bad, but he didn’t look so great either. All that wet hair sticking to his face made him look like he had been out here in the rain a lot longer than Craig had taken to walk from school, and his expression made Craig’s stomach churn like a washer on spin cycle. It was making him feel a little nauseous.

“Hey Craig.” His voice sounded funny, and he must have noticed because Craig watched a flicker of embarrassment pass over his face as he rubbed his nose on the cuff of his shirt and cleared his throat.

“I mean, hey.”

“Hey.”

Craig considered asking him how long he planned to stand there blocking the door, when it was freezing and raining on them both, but before he could open his mouth and do so Tweek cut him off.

“You want to do something later?” he asked, twisting his fingers in the bottom of his sweatshirt. Of course, Craig’s immediate response to this was to recoil – the idea of spending more time alone with Tweek filled him with so much terror it made his legs weak because what could they even _do_? Make unenjoyable small talk about movies and common friends? Awkwardly hold hands and pretend like neither was aware of the others boner or the persistent and dizzying tension in the air?

It had been only two weeks since the last time they touched, but it felt to Craig like it might have been forever. It felt to Craig like very nerve in his body was being drawn to him, and simultaneously repelled by the shame of his failure. And during moments of silence when Craig was alone, he couldn’t escape that fear inside him saying that the two of them will never touch again.

God, he just needed a moment. He needed twenty moments. He needed time and space or, even better, something that could completely erase the past month and a half from his mind.

“I have an assignment to do.” He lied. Tweek sucked his teeth and looked down, toward his shoes and the squished joint still visible under the toe of his sneakers.

“The one you handed in today?”

“No, a different one!”

“Craig, you can’t avoid me forever.”

“I’m not avoiding you! And that’s rich coming from you, anyway.”

It would have been too easy a victory to point out that Tweek had been the one trying to avoid him in the beginning. When they first had the misfortune of being paired.

He hunched his shoulders and tried to push past, but Tweek blocked his way in a manner that he found uncharacteristically insistent.

“ _Craig!”_

He looked so fed up and frustrated that it only made Craig madder. Craig shoved him aside, almost sending him flying, and he spared a moment to cast a scornful look over his shoulder when he reached the door.

“You’re so stoned you can’t even stand up.” He said, eying the way Tweek’s grip on the handrail had become vice-like and bloodless. Tweek gave him a look of fury and hurt, and again Craig thought he looked like a stranger. More and more frequently when Craig looked at Tweek, he saw a beautiful, drug addled, sex-having stranger.

Tweek said nothing. Craig continued uninterrupted back to their bedroom.

Tweek did not return.

…

 

Craig couldn’t sleep. For the first time in days he was still awake when Tweek arrived home from his classes, and for the first time in days, Tweek was asleep before he was.

Craig suspected he was probably sedated, or if he wasn’t he had sent the past three days without rest because the moment he walked through the door he was out like a light. Fortunately, he hadn’t even realised that Craig was still awake.

The bedside clock radio said it was almost midnight, and the steady shallow sound of Tweek’s breath was making the hairs on Craig’s arms all stand on end. Despite being exhausted, and despite all his efforts to rest since eight pm that evening, Craig’s mind was racing a mile a minute and without fail, he was thinking the precise same things over and over and over again.

Why can’t he just let it go? Why can’t he just give in and fuck him, and accept that once this was done the whole relationship would be over between the two of them? Craig had to come to terms with the fact that he had never even had a chance In the first place.

Why did he like this ridiculous, neurotic disaster of a boy so much? It didn’t seem fair. If he didn’t like him to the extent he did, then maybe it wouldn’t be so tremendous to fuck him. If he didn’t like him to the extent he did, maybe he wouldn’t feel so self-conscious whenever he thought about speaking to him, and looking at him, and being around him after the act of sex itself. How was he supposed to handle that anyway? How did normal people every day manage to meet the eye of someone they had fucked? It seemed like too much cognitive dissonance for him to manage. How did _Tweek_ manage? He was hardly a well composed person as it was.

Maybe he wasn’t giving the guy enough credit. If the previous few week’s adventures had taught Craig anything, it was that Tweek had more of a sexual history than Craig had ever considered. He should have been living proof that it didn’t have to be difficult, for two people who wanted to have sex with each other to actually get around to having sex.

Craig groaned, and sat upright in bed, checking his digital watch and noting that it was now 12.15. When he glanced over at the bed beside him, he could see Tweek, lying on his belly with his shirt riding up around the chest so the small of his back and the shadowy dimples at the very top of his ass were visible. His hair was, as always, plentiful, and thinking of him pushing hair back off his face made Craig’s legs feel like strands of long thin grass. His breathing was so soft, and sleeping, Craig realised Tweek was vulnerable. He was in that unknowing state he always hated, where anyone could creep on him and damage his physical form. It was strange, that only in this state of exposure, Craig could see so clearly all of the details that had made him fall for him when they had all been so obscure before.

Craig liked the way his breathing was short and excited, he liked the energy that buzzed on his skin like static electricity. He liked the way Tweek narrowed his eyes for just a fleeting moment before he said something contentious, and the creative single—mindedness that meant that thanks to his wiles and his obsessions, the pair of them had a kitchen in their bathtub. There was so much around him, so many quirks and details and jaunty little things, and they all resonated so damn well with Craig’s own rhythm of weirdness. Or normalcy. Or whatever it was he was that made him so receptive to Tweek and his idiosyncrasies. He adored the boys laugh, and the metal gymnastics he was capable of, and most of all he loved the way he slept on his stomach with his limbs splayed recklessly – it reminded Craig of passion and chaos and that dizzying feeling of adrenaline that filled him when he reached the cusp of a rollercoaster.

And this scared him.

Craig had never been so scared in his life.

How could someone like him ever hope to keep someone like Tweek? How did he even manage to get someone like Tweek in the first place? And he was starting to suspect it was probably cruel of him, to let the other boy think that Craig was avoiding him because he had been the one doing something wrong.

Craig realised had to be honest with him. Craig had to tell him they wouldn’t work out, because Tweek was above that and above him. And Craig didn’t want him to look at him in the aftermath of sex and see a mistake.

He sat up in bed, pushing his blankets down, and without pausing for a moment to remember that this was _Tweek_ , he was dealing with – the boy who accidentally broke someone’s arm in high school because they frightened him in line for their lunches – he moved from his mattress and dropped himself without ceremony onto his roommates bed.

Tweek sat bolt upright with a loud curse, and this gave Craig a fright as well. He managed to avoid Tweek lashing out at him with his fist, and finding a furious grip on his wrists Craig wenched the other boys arms far apart and out of the way of his face and other fleshy or tender parts of his anatomy.

“Tweek! It’s fucking _me_ oh my god!”

“ _Craig_?!” Tweek sounded livid. But Craig figured he would have time to be fucked off with him later.

“We need to talk.”

“About _what_?”

The height of his tone did not abate with time. Craig could almost feel his pulse racing in his wrists, and the sweat prickling cold on the palms of his hands.

“About us.”

“At one am?!”

“Sure.”

He dropped Tweek’s arms, and through the darkness broken by the display on Tweek’s digital clock he could see the other boy glaring at him, as though he was trying to figure out if he was real, or some awfully recognised and hyper-realistic nightmare.

“Sure?” He repeated. “Oh man. Oh man Craig. Fuck you.”

He huffed, and threw himself back down into the pillow, his arms wrapping around the thing and his face pressing hard into the creased cotton. Craig felt a pang in his intestines, like someone had shot an elastic band in there, and frustrated he tried to shake Tweek’s shoulder as if that might have encouraged him to sit up and take crag seriously.

“Don’t tell me to Fuck me!” He complained. “You wanted to talk about it before!”

“Yeah!” his voice was muffled by the pillow, and Craig could barely make it out. “But before isn’t now, is it? Sorry to tell you this, man, but you really went ahead and left it fucking late.”

“I was thinking about it!” he insisted, stung when Tweek jerked his shoulder and knocked Craig’s hand unceremoniously away. “And I was thinking about it all evening, and I’ve come to a conclusion. You want to hear?”

Tweek grunted, the pillow absorbing any expressions or words he might have had to say. Craig decided to take that as an affirmative.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that I can never fuck you. And that’s why I can’t do this anymore. There is nothing inside me that feels likeable or desirable enough for you, and so I’m not going to let you fuck up _your_ life by sleeping with me when you could go out there right this minute and sleep with anyone and everyone else.”

Tweek’s body stiffened for a moment, and Craig held his breath. He wasn’t going to get shitty about this, was he? The first honest, selfless thing Craig had ever done…. He better not get shitty!

Craig drew back a little when Tweek sat up, and his shadowy, beautiful face fixed on Craig’s, the only discernible feature thee glimmer of confusion deep inside his shadowy eyes.

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t fuck you. I’m not that great. I’m kinda ugly and kinda a jerk, and you could do way better so I can’t fuck you. I really don’t think I could deal with the guilt. So now you know, can we just go back to being friends already? I can’t sleep properly knowing I might not be able to spend time with you again.”

He couldn’t make out the expressions that passed over Tweek’s face. It wasn’t until Tweek spoke, and Craig felt a prickle of shame crawl over the backs of his hands, that he realised that that was a whole lot of information to just dump on someone like that. Particularly after they had only just woken from sleep.

“Dude. What do you mean, you’re not ‘desirable’ enough? Why would you even say something like that?”

Honestly, Craig thought he sounded a little bit _offended_. Although why that might have been was incomprehensible. It had seemed obvious, what the phrase ‘too good for’ meant in this context, and Craig was a little irked and embarrassed that he was needing to explain it more in depth than he had intended.

“Well, you know.” He shrugged, and Tweek stared at him like he did not, in fact, know at all.

“Know what?”

“Well look at me. I’m boring and I have no notable skills and I’m the aesthetic equivalent to air.”

“The what?”

“ _I’m invisible._ ” Craig wrung his fingers in Tweek’s duvet in frustration, and only after a certain application of forced emphasis did Tweek comprehend what he was saying, sucking in a deep breath and releasing it with a low, drawn out

 _“Ohhhh…_ ”

That made sense to him, Craig supposed. He waited for his response, but when it came he was honestly a little bit unimpressed.

“Craig, I don’t know what kind of a guy you think I am? Trust me dude, that’s not even a little bit true.”

“Dude. You can’t tell me what is and isn’t true.”

“Uh, yes I can? You should seriously take a minute to listen to yourself right now. Or better yet, maybe you should stop trying to _tell_ me how I feel about you, because believe it or not, I actually kinda already know.”

Craig doubted it. He narrowed his eyes, and sat back a little – without even realising, he had accidentally gravitated closer so the two of them had only a few inches separating their faces. Tweek sighed, and reached past him for the lamp on the table between their beds.

“Craig, before this whole thing, even though I didn’t even think you liked me that much, I still thought of you as though you were my best friend.” He sat back, arranging himself so he leant against thee headboard behind him and raking his nails up his forearms in a gesture which almost seemed defensive. “But now, I guess… I dunno. For a while, I almost think I could imagine you as someone to come home to, and to be comfortable around. Mostly though, I thought about how you were someone I wanted to be _good_ for. Not like… behaviour good. But more sort of generally good. Appropriate? I wanted to improve the person I am so that you would be happy. And before I thought that I wanted to improve the person I was so you wouldn’t hate me anymore, but now I want to improve the person I am because you deserve better from me. And I think you should know that because otherwise you’re just gunna sit there telling yourself that yore terrible when actually, you’re exactly everything I ever could have hoped for.”

And he fell silent, sitting with his arms crossed gently on his lap and his brow furrowed so a shallow crease appeared between his eyebrows. Craig gaped at him, unsure if that was some kind of a love confession, or a confession of his own crippling insecurities. Should he argue with him? Should he go back to his own bed and ruminate further? Maybe if he pretended he didn’t hear him the pair could just go back to pretending this whole thing had never happened.

But no, Craig told himself firmly. How could he ever go back to the status quo after hearing that? He felt himself turn pink under the way Tweek was watching him, and in the end he had to turn his face away, shoulders sagging.

“I don’t want you to sleep with me and then decide you don’t like me like that after all. I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”

“But I don’t want you to be my friend anymore. I want you to be my boyfriend. Or failing that I want you to leave me alone and not stress me out by making this last longer than it has to. Also, we really, really don’t have to have sex if you don’t want it. I swear, sex is really, entirely incidental.”

“Okay. Well that’s great. It doesn’t matter what I pick I’m still going to be minus one best friend.”

Tweek sighed, and at least he had the decency to look a little bit sorry about it.

“It’s in your best interests as well,” he pointed out. “If you had a crush on me for as long as you say, then maybe you never really saw me as a friend in the first place.”

 

…

  
They went to McDonalds for lunch, because neither of them had enough money to go to a restaurant. The sky was steely grey and the air felt humid, and they sat in the booth close to the window so Craig could lean against the glass while he ate. He was tired, but he felt okay – as Craig watched Tweek dissect his burger and inspect every feature with particular care, he thought that it was sort of charming and sort of characteristic. He wondered if he should start making some kind of an internal catalogue maybe, recording all of Tweek’s details and habits like one might record a song they like on the radio. Maybe Craig would understand him better if he just started to accept him and his odd little quirks without questioning them? Or maybe Craig was thinking too hard again – as a wise Clyde had once said, _dude, you are thinking too hard about this whole thing._ And as loathe as Craig was to admit it, he had a point.

If he spent too long thinking about things, and concerning himself with a loss that may never happen, then he was never going to get anywhere in the first place.

He needed to relax. Enjoy the moment and forget it afterwards. Let go of the feelings, and the awareness of everything, and learn to anticipate what was coming up. For example, the thing that Tweek says when he finally finishes inspecting his burger, and takes a bite.

“Ooo ook foghtful.”

“… What?”

Craig frowned at him, and Tweek shook his head, swallowing his mouthful and setting his burger back down so he could wipe crumbs off his mouth.

“You look thoughtful.”

“Oh. Yeah. I was just thinking about what you said last night.”

He wasn’t really. At least, with regards to that, there wasn’t actually anything to think about. Tweek was correct; it was as simple as that. Craig had not thought of Tweek as a friend as a long time – somehow, somewhere along the line, Tweek had become a fantasy. A daydream. An unreality like the ghostly colours Craig saw when he closed his eyes. Letting go of that fantasy… it was painful. But being able to see him as he was, speaking through his burger and wearing clothes he grabbed out of the laundry basket, reminded Craig that now he got the opportunity to get to know him all over again. To see him all the time in the ways he had never realised he could before.

“Seriously? Did it fuck you up that much? Sorry if it did – I didn’t mean to weird you out or anything. I just –“

“You didn’t weird me out.” Craig assured him, glancing down at his fries and the smudges of grease they made on the tray liner. “It helped me a lot I think. Shook me up like I needed. I really need to learn to get out of my head now and again ‘cause otherwise I guess I forget… you know. Reality. How to be honest with myself.”

Tweek sniggered, and reached across the table to pinch a few fries off the top of Craig’s tray.

“Imagine, having to take a reality check from a guy like me.”

He said it lightly, but he kept his eyes down and the gentle ring self-depreciation hung on the air like the smell of burgers and chicken McNuggets. Craig felt his heart pinch a little for this colourful, incredible, unkempt and chaotic boy. He opened his mouth to tell him that it didn’t matter, how Tweek might or might not have seen himself sometimes. Overall, Tweek was probably more real than anything or anyone Craig had ever known. 

It was raining on the way back to the dorm. At first Craig had thought it wouldn’t matter, but by the time they were four blocks walk away the rain broke and started falling in buckets - Tweek’s off-white t-shirt was going transparent and sticking to his shoulders and his back. There was a brief and terrible moment when Craig thought Tweek might have panicked about this. When the sky opened and dumped water over them both, Craig could see thorough the gloomy afternoon that his eyes were wide and his cheeks pink, and in the wetness his blonde hair stuck in long dark ribbons to his neck and cheeks. Behind them, the street lamps flickered on and traffic honked and growled amongst itself, the symphony of windscreen wipers the background to the sound of pattering rain.

“Are you serious?” Tweek asked him, voice flat in dismay. “Ohhhh my god. Fucking shit man, this is my last clean shirt.”

“It’s cleaner now,” Craig told him, pulling his own wet beanie off his head and wringing it, to no effect. Tweek huffed, extracting his phone from his pocket and passing it to Craig wordlessly so he could stash it inside his raincoat. As he did this, he looked around, searching for shelter even though shelter was, by this point in time, useless. All the same, Craig did not find himself starting to regret their leaving the dormitory that afternoon, as he tucked the phone out of the rain and into the warm dry pocket of his coat. For some reason, the streetlamps flickering on through the grey, and the shiny smell of water on tarseal, had never seemed so distinct or beautiful before.

“Run home then, I guess, and maybe you won’t get any wetter.”

Tweek looked at him like he wasn’t sure if he was serious, and if he was then he was going to have to shut the fuck up.

Craig rolled his eyes, and despite being alarmed when Tweek grabbed him he let him take his hand and yank him forward into an unanticipated sprint, and even though the cold was making his nose and his lips feel numb, Craig’s whole body was on fire in exhilaration. His feet seemed to fall into air and he bounded over puddles and gutters screaming, telling him to slow the fuck down but hoping deep inside he would never stop.

“What the fuck Tweek?!! Oh my god?!”

He didn’t stop swearing until they got back to the dorm steps. His voice was hoarse, and Tweek laughed hard at how fiercely he was panting, but he thought as he flipped him off that for the first time in ages, at least he felt _alive_.

 

…

 

They got back to the room and it was warmer than it was outside, and Craig was pulling off his coat when he felt Tweek’s hand sliding over his waist and into his coat pocket for a his phone.

“I’m drenched,” he reported, and Tweek grunted in sympathy, checking his phone messages and breathing a sigh of relief when there were no new ones.

“Same. You can have the first shower if you like?”

Craig arched his eyebrows, having not given any thought to wether or not he would bother to have a shower or if he would be better to go straight to bed.

“Shower?”

“Of course.” He sniggered, and his smile was so beautiful it made Craig’s whole body tingle. “Look at you! You’re a mess.”

“Gee, thanks.” Craig pulled a face, tugging his shirt up over his head and tossing it down onto the unmade disaster he called his bed. He wondered if he should mention that holding hands during the run home had been highly enjoyable and a little bit titillating, but the he remembered that he was trying hard not to think too much about the whole situation and so he just went ahead and spat it out.

“We should hold hands more,” He said, “It does things to me.”

“It does things to you?”

“Yeah. Technically. I mean I don’t hate it.”

“Oh. Good. Okay. I guess that explains what that means then.”

Cold hands wandered over the sides of his bare waist, giving him a start, and Tweek started laughing at him as though he was endeared by the way Craig tried to squirm out of his arms.

“What are you doing?!”

It was easier in theory than in practice. Tweek had nice arms, and a nice grip, and some part of Craig didn’t really want to escape that badly anyway.

“Trying to hug you, asshole. Stand still.”

Tweek pressed his face against the curve of Craig’s neck, and this close he was probably able to feel his pulse flittering in his throat. He was probably able to feel the weight of Craig’s body fall against his chest as he slowly started to loose stability in his legs as well, and smell the odour of skin and sweat and rain that had sunken deeply into his pores.

“… Hug me?”

What a high pitched and embarrassing tone of voice. Tweek nodded.

“Sure. Is that okay?”

It wasn’t even a question really. Tweek’s body felt good and solid behind him, even if his clothes were cold and wet through to his skin. The recollection of how his belly looked, the scar above his hip and the slim, straight lines of his chest, all rose to the surface of Craig’s mind like ticklish bubbles rising through water. Craig nodded and gave in to the hands roaming over the smooth terrain of his stomach, and drawing a shaky, almost dizzying breath he closed his eyes.

Good. This was good. He felt okay, and kind of excited. Would Tweek try and go for it today, or-

No, Craig scolded himself. He was thinking again. Thinking too hard and ruining it, when all he should be doing is focusing on the other boy’s body at his side.

“Are you feeling anything now?”

It took him a moment to make sense of Tweek’s murmurs, against the back of his ear and tickling his nerves in a way he could have described as pleasurable. Craig’s blood turned cold, and then hot again. A wave of dizzy euphoria swelled in him like a tidal wave and threatened to bring him to his knees.

“Mm… Maybe?” he tried, and it came out coherently, if breathless.

“Maybe?”

“Why are you like this?”

It almost felt like a joke. Like Tweek was making fun of him, and maybe he was but in some messed up way Craig didn’t care. He really didn’t give a single fuck. Tweek shrugged, and made an ‘I-don’t-know’ sort of sound which expressed to Craig something very acute, and very specific he couldn’t quite translate into words.

 _He is comfortable with me_ , He acknowledged, aware of the relaxed way the pair of them were standing, and the fashion in which Tweek’s hips were pressed right against the curve of his butt. _He is comfortable, and happy that I’m talking to him again, and that’s a Good Thing._

Craig felt something like relief, a weight lifting off his chest as he sighed and let his head fall back against his roommates shoulder.

“Okay,” he relented. “Take me to the shower then.”

And Tweek did, shuffling him across the room to the bathroom and guiding him to rest against the sink while he cleared out his coffee related miscellany from the tub.

“Be quick.” He insisted, erecting himself and almost catching Craig staring at his ass in wet denim. “I need to shower too. If I get too cold I might get hypothermia and die.”

“We can’t allow that to happen.”

“Nuh-uh. No way man. Not even once.”

“Well then why don’t you shower first?”

“Why should I shower first? I don’t want you to get hypothermia either.”

Craig rolled his eyes.

“Well why don’t we shower _together?_ ”

And the moment he said it, something happened. It was like everything in the entire universe shifted an inch to the left, and everything that had ever felt not-quite-okay or not-exactly-correct felt _right._

It was like stars aligning. Like a perfect row of lottery numbers called one after another. It was a faultless arrangement of chords in a harmony, and it made Craig feel charmed as it dropped off his tongue.

“… Huh?”

“Shower together.” Craig said it again, and the words still rung with an effervescent sense of destiny. “You and me. In there. Warming up. Getting cleaned up. Or whatever you want to call it.”

Tweek stared at him openly with those heart-melting green eyes, his lips parted in a little ‘o’ of surprise.

“You mean naked, right?”

“Of course.”

And it was cute really – Tweek’s whole face exploded into colour like a field of wildflowers in spring, and the words that spilled out of him were suddenly very high and trebly with embarrassment.

“Oh. Uh. Shit. Okay? I mean, that wasn’t what I was trying to imply, I just… oh god. Wow. Ohhhh my god.”

He brought a hand up to cover the lower half of his face, and for a moment he looked like he might have been ready to walk straight out of the room, but Craig reached for his hand, still guided by the sense of rightness in the air around him, and caught him before he had a chance to leave.

“Dude, don’t freak out. I know what you were trying to imply. But it’s okay. We can do it.”

“… Really?” Tweek didn’t sound convinced. “Are you sure? Wouldn’t it be kind of… I dunno. Weird?”

Craig shrugged.

“Why would it be weird?”

“We’d be naked together?”

“We were nearly naked together the other day, remember?”

Craig tried his best to remain straight faced and calm, even though just mentioning that incident made his knees feel spongey and unsound. He hoped Tweek wouldn’t notice him blushing like a silly little child.

Tweek’s eyebrows lifted, and he inhaled in a way that made his nostrils flare.

“Uh, yeah. I may remember that.”

“Was that weird?”

“… It got a little weird, yeah.” He paused a moment, and frowned. “It could’ve been weirder.”

“…”

Craig wasn’t really sure what to say. He wondered if that momentary sense of rightness had been misguided. But then Tweek sighed and folded his arms defensively over his chest.

“You’re not allowed to laugh at my dick.” He said, and Craig might have laughed at him _then_ if he hadn’t been so gravely serious.

“Why would I do that?”

Tweek shrugged, and turned his gaze up to the suspicious patch of mould on the ceiling.

“I dunno. It’s pretty cold in these wet clothes you know.”

“Dude, I know how it is with that kind of thing.”

Tweek sighed, and rolled his eyes, but he began to remove his jeans all the same and when he did, Craig’s heart bounced to the ceiling of his chest.

That definitely seemed like a yes.

They undressed in silence, and Craig’s hands were shaking so much from nerves that he barely even succeeded in loosing his fly. Once he had stripped to his underpants, he felt almost physically incapable of looking at anything beneath the other boy’s shoulders. There was a few seconds of horrible tension where he wondered if he would be able to remove his underpants, but then Tweek had the good grace to look away and busy himself switching the shower on. Steam and hot water gushed out in a startling jet, and Tweek swore, tugging the curtain behind the spray to avoid the water splashing all over the floor. Craig took this opportunity to strip right down to his bare skin.

Tweek was already climbing into the shower, manipulating the curtain in a way that effectively obscured Craig’s view. He didn’t point it out though, because clearly Tweek had hoped he wouldn’t notice, and flustered beyond all previous experience (But also bordering on faint with excitement) Craig also scrambled under the jet and Tweek dropped the curtain to let him in.

“… Hi.” He said after a few seconds, allowing Craig a moment to catch his breath. They were standing face to face, and chest to chest, and between them the five inch gap gave no leeway to steal a sneaky glimpse down. Craig nodded in response, and clenched his fists to steady himself. He was feeling a little bit noodle-legged and didn’t want his limbs to give way beneath his weight.

“Hey.”

“… You want some hot water?”

Craig said he did. Tweek manoeuvred the two of them so they were both under the jet, and awkwardly Craig set about cleaning himself.

It wasn’t as straight forward as it should have been. The space in the shower was even more limited than usual, and every now and again Craig felt something warm and slightly stiff touch his upper thigh, in a way that sent frissions of excitement over his skin. It made his cock feel hot and half-rigid as well, and when Tweek placed his hand at the small of Craig’s back and pressed their hips together, Craig thought they were going to kiss each other and his heart almost broke out of his chest just thinking about it.

But then Tweek reached past him for the shampoo, and Craig realised he was holding him because he needed to get his head under the water, and he started laughing.

“What’s funny?” Tweek asked him, pausing in his motion to remove the shampoo from its spot on the corner rack. His expression of confusion was almost obscured by the steam, and Craig felt himself laughing harder.

“This is ridiculous.” He insisted. “This was a terrible idea.”

“Yeah, but we’re here now, and at least we aren’t cold any more. You want to do me a favour and shampoo my hair?”

Craig said he would oblige him, and he did, and after a spot of conditioner Tweek was done. He stepped out of the stream of water and allowed Craig to inch into the middle, the hot water pouring over prickling skin.

“Don’t be too long.” He said, wringing his wet hair out and daring to dip his eyes down, to the places between Craig’s shoulders and his waist. “It’d be cool if we could maybe watch a movie?”

Craig nodded, daring to turn a little more toward him so that if he liked to look down again, he might have been able to see a little more. Despite the invitation though, he didn’t.

Tweek gave him a smile and pushed the shower curtain aside. Craig caught a brief and tantalising glimpse of his ass as he stepped out of the shower, and he had to press his hand against the wall because as he did, a sudden wave of weakness washed over him.

Was that normal?

He took a deep breath, water running over his cheeks and into his mouth against his will, and decided he didn’t really care if it was.


	6. we made it folks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fucking forgot i said Tweek doesnt use shampoo earlier in the fic and went and let him use shampoo in the end of the last chapter. i had to spend one year and three months recovering from the horror of the mistake i had wrought. Please forgive me for the lateness of this update.

Craig had never been anywhere as fancy as this in his life. Although he knew this fact well before he passed through the doors of _Monte Rufino_ , it only became real for him the moment he sat down at the table and saw that the napkins were folded in neat triangles next to his cutlery. It was uncanny, to see them anywhere other than in a little silver dispenser next to the salt and pepper shakers.

“Are you sure this is okay?” he asked, picking up a gleaming silver spoon and wishing he had had the forethought to wear something other than blue jeans. Tweek, who was dressed in a button shirt and chinos and for the first time in history seemed much more comfortable than Craig, shrugged and told him that if it all went pear shaped, they could always just wait until the staff weren’t looking and run away. Craig wasn’t sure weather or not he was being sarcastic.

They ordered their meals, and exchanged light conversation. Although it wasn’t much different from the usual stupid stuff they talked about (school, South Park, and common friends) Craig couldn’t sake the feeling that there was a certain amount of extra pressure on them to enjoy themselves now they were here, in a _real_ restaurant. He could tell from the way Tweek’s fingers worried the edge of his napkin that he felt it too. And the way his eyes kept wandering to the window, and the burger bar just across the street... it said more than Craig thought his mouth could.

“It’s weird here,” Craig mentioned, during a lull in conversation. “this is way more formal than McDonalds. Or the shower.”

Tweek laughed awkwardly and fumbled his fork off the table. The people at the table next door gave him a slightly distasteful look, and Craig couldn’t help but start laughing. There was something vaguely nostalgic about pissing some snotty stranger off. It reminded him of being ten, romping without remorse through some poor strangers yard.

His date, at first, seemed annoyed by this bout of immaturity, but seeing him scowling darkly across a formally set and exquisitely fancy table only exaggerated Craigs giggles. Eventually though, he must also have seen the hilarity. Nervousness did have a fascinating tendency to enable a sense of the absurd in everything. Particularly the fact that they were two young men on their first foray into he world of adults, and that although the people at the next table didnt know it they had been up all night the night before playing Candyland and making paper hats – something that Tweek was _terrible_ at.

“ _Craig,_ ” His voice quivered with nervous laughter, eyes darting to the people next door who were still in the process of staring at his hair and thinking that he needed a haircut. “ix-nay on the ower-shay.”

This set Craig right off again.

The people next door pulled faces of revulsion and returned their attention to their dining.

After the mirth melted away, the conversation between the two of them lulled again. Craig’s eyes wandered over the scenery of the restaurant – the faux brickwork feature walls and the gilding on the light fixtures on the walls. A large photograph of an Italian villa hung pride of place net to the entrance, and fleetingly Craig thought that someday when they were older, and financially secure, the two of them could go to Italy and spend a summer. Wearing shorts and holding ands and making love in a beautiful old hose in the country. They could go to museums, and eat gelato bought from parlours and corner stores, and as they wove their way across the ridges and hills of the Italian countryside, the air would smell like grapes and sunshine...

He realised he was daydreaming when Tweek cleared his throat, and immediately Craig sat up straight and hoped he had no way of knowing what was on his mind.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Craig lied.

Tweek regarded him for a moment, gnawing thoughtfully on his bottom lip, before replying.

“You were smiling?”

“Was I?”

Craig was sure that by now, he was blushing. He knew this should be something he could express to the person he was romantically interested in, but honestly Craig had never _thought_ such a thing before and he wanted a few minutes to process the feelings for himself first time around. He would mention the idea of a holiday to Tweek later. Maybe. Something told Craig that Tweek, with his suspicion of any object that claimed to have flying abilities, was not really the holiday kind of guy.

Dang. What a shame.

“Uh huh. You looked completely lost in something.”

He paused, his eyes fluttering for a short moment in thought.

“I know it sounds contradictory, what with the paranoia and all, but I think that’s one of the things I like most about you. I can never tell exactly what’s on your mind.”

Craig didnt know what to say to that. He allowed himself to look pleased, but embarrassed, and between them the comment hung unanswered on the silence. Craig wouldn’t have suspected Tweek would like that at all. But Craig was starting to get used to acknowledging that he didnt actually know the first thing about Tweek.

And then his company spoke again.

“Do you know the first time I ever thought that I could fall for you?”

Craig’s heart skyrocketed to the highest vault of his chest. His palms suddenly became swamps, and he pressed his lips together in an effort to contain his sharp breath intake.

“Uh, no.”

“It was two weeks after we started living together.”

Tweek was starting to look flustered again. He reached for the salt shaker between the two of them and fiddled with it, and Craig could see up close and in detail all the handsome features of his hands. His nails were so short, bitten to the quick. But the backs of his hands looked smooth and pleasant textured. Craig knew from experience that they were.

“Was it?”

“Uh huh. I came home late one morning high as fuck. Id just taken something... some kind of feel good stuff I guess, I don’t remember what. You were up working on your online quiz still, and we said ‘hi’ in that way that meant we still didnt know how to talk to each other right. I remember, the feeling of thinking that you looked so _tired.”_

“I was.”

Craig actually remembered the incident in question. His heart was hammering, so loud he could barely hear Tweek reminiscing about how he had been so scared of starting his college classes, and the pills he had taken had made him feel sparkling all over, and how he saw in sounds and felt in colours and he had been startled when Craig had let his guard so low that rather than turn away and return to his schoolwork after exchanging a greeting, he had turned to face him.

“... And anyway. I guess you were just so exhausted by this point that instead of doing your usual thing, you turned and looked at me and smiled a fraction. The corners of your mouth curved up just a little bit. I’d never seen you smile before, since we stopped being kids I mean. and it was like... it was like my heart had just been run over. Like someone had turned on this blinding light and I realised I had never been able to see anything so clearly before. You just seemed so... vulnerable.”

He paused, his fingers fiddling shyly with the bottom of the salt shaker.

“I spent so long trying to work out, if that was something I imagined or if it was real. You know how sometimes you dream about someone and when the dream is over, you can feel completely different about that person?”

Craig nodded.

“It was like that. I saw you smile once, maybe even in a drug induced fantasy, and I thought you were the most beautiful human being in all of history. Isn’t that stupid?”

Craig didnt think it was stupid at all.

He would have told Tweek, he thought it was wonderful, but then their meals arrived and he didn’t.

 

...

 

They got home late, after dessert at a local ice-cream bar. Tweek was still calm, and Craig felt contented. Craig knew, based on the way Tweek fumbled with his key in the door, that he was tired. They both was. Craig could think of nothing more perfect than falling into bed with him, and kissing him, and following that wherever it took them.

The clarity of this thought was notable..surprising even. He let it flow through him, and he understood without a doubt that time was right now. It wasn’t an earth shattering heart pounding moment. It wasn’t nearly as explosive as he had always thought it should be. As Tweek finally managed to get the lock right, and the door swung open to let them in, he simply _knew_ it. In the deepest, sweetest parts of his soul.

“You want to shower first?” Tweek asked him as they moved inside. Craig shook his head and stripped off his jacket. He had showered already before they left for dinner. He knew already that Tweek had too.

“Brilliant,”

Tweek stripped of his own jacket, dropping it over the back of his desk chair. Craig felt the breath of his deodorant pass him by as he moved around the room, removing his shoes, removing his shirt, undoing his fly and sitting on the edge of his bed.

Craig turned around, leaning on the edge of his desk, and heaved a sigh.

“I guess this is it then?”

Tweek smiled at him shyly, threads of blond hair falling into his eyes.

“Don’t sound too excited. We don’t have to if you don’t want to?”

“I want to,” Craig told him, his voice sounding unfamiliar to his own ears. Or perhaps, he had never really be conscious of the sound of his own voice before. “Just... I dunno what to do.”

Tweek’s smile turned into a small, beautiful grin.

“Let me help you out with that, then.”

Craig was happy to oblige.

Tweek stood up from the bed, and hitching Craig’s body over his shoulder. He dumped him with no ceremony into the mattress on Craig’s side of the room. The movement made his belly swoop, and goosebumps break out on his arms.

“You’re stronger than you look,” Craig told him, quivering in anticipation against the sheets. Tweek hummed in acknowledgement and hurried to the door to secure the lock – if things went the way they ought to, they certainly didn’t want anyone just walking on in. Not that anyone usually did.

“You’re lighter than you look.” He replied, returning the bed and pushing Craig back down, against the pillows. “And I bet more ticklish.”

Craig swore when his fingers found the sensitive side of his ribs, his body tensing in shock and pleasure and excitement all at the same time. The duvet rumpled underneath his back and thighs, and it was a sensation he might have hated in any context except for this, just like the feeling of bare teeth sinking into his neck was something he had never dared to think about as sexy up until now. The way Tweek touched him, and played his hands over the lines of Craig’s waist, made him feel strangely beautiful.

The strength with which Tweek pinned him was breathtaking – not tat Craig needed to breathe, when he was being kissed so sweetly, so deep. Urgently he pressed his hips up, silently pleading with his partner to remove his clothes. At the same time, though, he did not want Tweek to take his hands off his wrists. His shoulders. His throat and jaw.

“Let’s get you naked, shall we?”

Craig shivered in anticipation, the tickle of Tweek’s whisper a pleasure in the shell of his ear. Suddenly, it made sense. Tweek _would_ be good at sex. He’s done it enough times, before.

“Good idea.”

Tweek made quick work of stripping him down. As he did so, his hair swept around his face. Craig watched the contours of his smooth, muscled body, hands tracing patterns and love notes on his skin. Once they were naked, Tweek pulled him close again. Tweek’s hand found his in between their bodies and guided it lower

“You can keep touching me.”

Every single one of Craig’s organs felt a shudder when his fingertips brushed against the smooth, satiny skin of Tweek’s cock.

His shock was amplified by the little groan of pleasure that escaped his partner, and the way his eyes fluttered closed in bliss. With his spare hand, Craig seized his hair and kissed him, pressing teeth against teeth and using all of his weight to roll the other man over beneath him. The bed was almost too skinny, but they managed, and soon Craig was sitting on top with his tongue sinking deeply against the planes and hollows of Tweek’s mouth.

Jerking him off felt like nothing – it happened without thinking just like Tweek’s hands found the sensitive places on the backs of his thighs without Craig having to tell him they were there. He broke the kiss to gasp softly, moving far enough back to see the places their skin was touching – his leg lay tightly flush with Tweek’s upper thigh. When he looked at the other boys erection properly, for the first time, it felt surreal, and that was probably because it looked almost precisely how he had imagined it. Unremarkable and flushed, with his foreskin intact.  It quivered when Craig rubbed the pad of his thumb against the head, and as his eyes swept back up Tweek’s face he thought that this was okay. This was better than okay. He felt kind of powerful and kind of brave, and when green eyes locked on his, burning with a desire he had never seen before, Craig suddenly found himself thinking of ways he could make this boy twist and gasp against the blankets. He tried to imagine of all the different ways he could take that flushed-but-dignified expression straight off his face.

His mouth was too wet, and he had to remove his fingers from Tweek’s hair to wipe it. When he did so, Tweek sniffed and propped himself up. His breathing was shallow and irregular, mirroring the way Craig jerked his hand.

“First handjob?” he asked, in a croaking and deeply beautiful voice. Craig tried to swallow his spit, and nodded.

“You want me to stop?”

“More gentle.” He replied, reaching between them and curling his fingers softly around Craig’s own. He let himself fall backwards, relaxing into the pillow and a halo of blonde hair, as he guided the touch between his legs to a slightly more languid pace. Craig felt as though his heart was going to come out of his mouth – he had never seen anything or anyone so magical before.

 “Sorry.”

When he said it, he felt his lips tingle, and he had to tense his thighs to relax his own erection, pressed rigidly against his partners hipbone.

”… S’alright.”

Tweek’s voice trailed into a little murmur, his fingers wrapped on Craig’s and trembling with unknown power. The wetness from the tip was making Craig’s palm slippery and the inside of his cheeks prickle like he was tasting vinegar. It suddenly occurred to him that Tweek might want him to put it in his mouth.

It seemed like a good, natural thing to do. There wasn’t really a reason he could think of to not. When he drew a shaking breath and bowed down, it definitely took his partner by surprise.

“Oh! Jesus, okay?”

Tweek’s spare hand flew to the crown of his head, fumbling with his hair and torn between pulling him closer and pushing him away. The heat of precome on his lips, however, brought vindication, and Craig didn’t notice anything save the easy way it slid over his tongue and rubbed against the palate of his mouth. He put all his weight into pinning the other boys leg down, all his concentration into swallowing as much as he could. He hardly even noticed as Tweek gave into him and pulled the hand wrapped on his away.

“Holy fuck… oh my fucking god, _Craig_.” He half heartedly fumbled, squirming on the mattress and pulling on the roots of Craig’s hair. “Fuck. Fuck. Craig you gotta stop _seriously_ imgunna-“

Craig did as he was asked, although this was only partially because he was feeling generous.

“You’re gunna come?” he asked, and breathless Tweek nodded, trying to sit up and meeting with little success.

“It’s been so long... I don’t want to go and fuck this up.” He said, turning pinker than he was already under the weight of Craig’s gaze. “We shouldn’t rush. I want to enjoy this as much as I possibly can.”

“Why? Are you scared if you come in my mouth I won’t want to jerk you off again?”

“I’m actually scared that if you finish me off now, I won’t be able to fuck you later.”

He made a good point. Crag bit his lip, letting his hands come to rest on Tweek’s chest and tilting his hips forward so his cockhead bobbed against Tweek’s lower belly. Their dicks were very nearly touching, but in a way the distance was more thrilling than the idea of closing the gap.

“So why don’t you fuck me now?”

Tweek looked shocked, and a little bit terrified, but Craig wasn’t sure if that was because he hadn’t seen this coming or if he was afraid of what Craig might do to him if he shot his load the second he got on his dick.

“Are you positive?”

“Yes!”

He couldn’t help the little snigger which escaped him, a bubble of delight overflowing and spilling into the air between them both. He felt euphoric - light and carefree like he hadn’t felt for a long time. The feeling reminded him of those sweet summers when his feelings for this boy were just an innocent crush.

He was _positive_. He wanted it, and he could almost feel it in him.

That in itself was unreal.

Tweek sat up shockingly quick, reaching for Craig’s bedside drawers and flinging the middle one open to retrieve lubricant, and one of the condoms Craig had gotten a couple of days ago from the pharmacy, just in case. Despite the embarassment that had cost him, Craig was so, so glad he had done it.

Tweek passed the lube over with tremoring hands, and with his heart pounding higher and higher in his chest with the passing seconds Craig opened the little bottle, and gestured that Tweek should hold out his hand.

It took him a moment to figure out what he was meaning.

“… You want me to bottom?”

“No. but you fingerfuck me open first right.”

His eyes fluttered, and Craig thought he saw a glimmer of something immensely powerful and dominant stir inside them.

“You want _me_ to do it?”

Craig grabbed his hand and emptied half a tube of lube onto his fingers.

“Just do it. Although it might be better if I get on the bottom again,” He tossed the bottle down onto the floor. “Maybe if it makes it easier you should kiss me.”

They figured it out in the end. As Craig had already noticed, Tweek wasn’t ignorant of these things and soon Craig’s legs were open and his back was arched, the mattress creaking beneath them as Tweek concentrated on doing absolutely everything exactly right. There was a moment when Craig had thought it wasn’t going to happen – Between feeling full with his fingers, and being split with his cock, Craig had had a moment thinking that his dick was too big and it would _never_ go inside, but then suddenly there was pain and there was fulfilment, and it left him breathless and cold with sweat but the shock of being opened felt good too – he clutched his partners hips with his legs and gasped for him to give him a moment to compose himself. Just a few seconds before he gave himself over, and he finally came to terms with the fact that he was having sex.

It didn’t even hurt that much when Tweek kissed him.

The kiss was slow and sweet and burning, slipping down his back and spreading in his belly so that even the parts of himself frozen with the ache of penetration melted, and he relaxed around the body inside him as though it had been there all his life. After a few minutes of silence and lips, he felt himself breathing words into the ear of his partner. Words that sounded a bit like _You can move now_ , and _holy mother of god your cock feels big_.

When they parted, Tweek looked troubled, and distantly Craig wondered if he was okay. When he opened his mouth to ask, he gets his answer.

“I can’t move.” The other boy told him. “If I move an inch I swear I’m going to come.”

And it’s this, in all its ridiculous, embarrassing beauty, that makes Craig break into stupid giggles, his belly rising and falling in snatches of breath while Tweek’s shoulders tense in resistance to climax.

“Oh my god…”

“You’re enjoying this _way_ more than I am,” Craig told him, but acknowledging this didn’t bring with it a sense of loss or resettlement, so much as a rush of affection for the boy with his dick in his ass.

“I’m sorry,” Tweek muttered, letting his fingers ghost spirals on the skin of Craig’s thighs. “Give me a minute… Can I just lie here inside you and kiss you for a while?”

It sounded like a wonderful idea. As his hands slid up Craig’s body they made him shiver in pleasure, his cock still twitching in interest between their bellies as Tweek lay little kisses and slow licks across his chest. His nipples were shockingly sensitive. When they pressed against a warm tongue Craig felt every nerve in his body tingle. A hand found his erection when a mouth found his neck, and soon Tweek was breathing heavily against him while he moaned for the other boy to let him come.

It was over so quickly. So quiet, and so strong. The release that came was much harder than usual, and left him feeling shaky and slightly disorientated as it bled out of him, his shoulders pinched back and a long, blissful cry of relief pulling from his lips. His length was still sensitive in Tweek’s palm, and the pressure inside his lower belly felt like it might split him in two if his partner didn’t hurry up and move.

“Good orgasm?” Tweek asked, and too exhausted to comment he waves a hand dismissively, indicating it was his turn to go.

It only took three thrusts, and Craig knew because he counted every one. He finished with a low, gratified groan, and collapsed on top of him.

He was heavy, and Craig was far too tired to pretend he didn’t mind.

“You weigh a million pounds.” He murmured, trying with weak arms to roll him off. Tweek sniggered, and let himself be pushed aside. Without the weight of his body on top of him, Craig suddenly felt naked and cold and covered in come - All of which were accurate reports of his physical state.

“… Can you get a towel?” he asked, as tiredness started to creep steadily through him. Tweek groaned like he didn’t really want to get up, but did so anyway, sliding off the bed and stumbling to  the towels hung to dry in front of the dorm room radiator.

“You want to shower again?” He asked, picking one up and glancing back at Craig, over his shoulder.

Craig didn’t, and he told him such, but thought that while right now he wanted nothing more than to cuddle and sleep, he would probably be up to have another shower later.

 

…

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there u go I guess.  
> That’s the thing we all came for.   
> We must all accept the disappointment and move on with our lives.

**Author's Note:**

> ive never used tinder tbh. id be terrible at it.


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